The Oral Case Presentation: A Key Tool for Assessment and Teaching in Competency Based Medical Education.
Oral case presentations by trainees to supervisors are core activities in academic hospitals across all disciplines and form a key milestone in US and Canadian educational frameworks. Yet despite their widespread use, there has been limited attention devoted to developing case presentations as tools for structured teaching and assessment. In this Viewpoint, we discuss the challenges in using oral case presentations in medical education, including lack of standardization, high cognitive demands, and the role of trust between supervisor and trainee. We also articulate how, by addressing these tensions, case presentations can play an important role in competency based education, both for assessment of clinical competence and for teaching clinical reasoning. Clinical supervisors are faced with a cognitively demanding exercise when listening to case presentations. Since presentations usually occur alongside clinical care, attending physicians often have to
JAMA