Research for interprofessional competency-based evaluation (RICE).

Competency-based curriculum has become widely accepted in health professional education as a way to define the knowledge, skill and attitudinal outcomes expected of the prelicensure learner. Experts in the field of competency-based education define ‘‘competency’’ as an integrated set of knowledge, skills, attitudes and judgments that enable one to effectively perform the activities of a given occupation or function to the standards expected in employment (Tardif, 2006). Since competency-based evaluation involves making subjective judgment about the quality of performance and development of a set of competencies, much attention is being paid to the development of appropriate evaluation strategies. Two evaluation tools of interest in the field of competency-based assessment in healthcare are the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) and the assessment rubric. The OSCE is a well established summative assessment strategy used in many health care education curricula, found to be valid and reliable for assessing clinical competence (Khattab & Rawlings, 2001). Scoring guidelines or ‘‘rubrics’’ are being used to provide more authentic, competency-based assessments relying on performance indicators that are precisely defined (Popham, 2000). The move towards competency-based interprofessional education (IPE) is clearly underway. However, according to Oandasan and Reeves (2005), there is a dearth in the literature pertaining to how to assess competencies related to the knowledge, skills and attitudes required for collaborative practice. While many assessments have been conducted that measure attitudinal shifts, a greater emphasis is needed to develop precise ways to measure all competencies (knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours) for IPE.