Use of Mini-CEX as Formative Assessment Tool in the Training of Undergraduate Medical Students in ENT Situation Analysis and the Way Forward

Mini-CEX assesses clinical competency and is mainly used as a formative assessment tool. Its use in postgraduate training is well documented. However, Mini-CEX would play a significant role in training undergraduate medical students, especially with the commencement of competency-based medical education in India. This work reports the situational analysis of the Mini-CEX implementation in the department of ENT.

The Department of ENT is using Mini-CEX for formative assessment of students’ clinical competence since 2017. Each student had to complete a minimum of five Mini-CEX encounters before the summative assessment. We reviewed the Mini-CEX assessment records of 149 undergraduate medical students who appeared for the summative exam in 2018.

We analysed the records of 874 Mini-CEX encounters. Each Mini-CEX encounter took 11 min on average. Each student completed five such assessments, which accounted for 55 min of one-to-one teacher-student interaction focused on clinical skills learning. The feedback time varied from 1 to 30 min. Feedback was focused on the cognitive (46%) and psychomotor (42%) domains. However, the majority of students reflected that they learned psychomotor skills during the Mini-CEX. Students selected only a few skills for the Mini-CEX, ignoring many must-know skills.

Mini-CEX is feasible as a formative assessment tool for medical undergraduates’ ENT training. It improves the assessor-student interaction, provides effective feedback, and develops the practice of reflection among students. However, regular review and training of the assessors and students are needed as a quality assurance measure.