Assessing the value of student case write-ups and write-up evaluations.

To investigate the attitudes of medical students concerning the educational value of case write-ups and write-up evaluations and the usefulness of write-up evaluations in assessing clinical skills, the author surveyed 140 students at McGill University after they had completed a 10-week clinical course in internal medicine. He also surveyed internal medicine course directors at the 16 Canadian medical schools to determine their assessments of write-up evaluation practices in their departments. There was broad agreement among the students and directors that case write-ups and their evaluations are useful for learning, but there were major concerns about the variability of the criteria and standards for evaluation. Recommendations are presented.