Learning and evaluation in medical education.

An educational experience is a complex event, which involves four distinct common places: learner, curriculum, milieu and teacher. Medical education is a unique form of educational experience. The learner is almost always an adult. The teacher is not necessarily trained to teach. Because of rapid changes in knowledge it is very dynamic. Life-long learning and evaluation are mandatory, for the student as well as the medical practitioner. This communication highlights some issues concerning learning and evaluation, as applicable to medical education, including the concept of learning by objectives, learning approaches, study strategies, learning methods; the purposes of evaluation, self-evaluation and common assessment methods. This is intended to create some awareness, in the medical student, resident or medical teacher of the need to begin to learn how to learn and demystify evaluation.