Step 2 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) assesses the ability of medical students to apply medical knowledge, skills and understanding of clinical science essential for patient care with emphasis on health promotion and disease prevention.
The USMLE Step 2 Clinical Skills (CS) exam consists of a series of learner-patient encounters in which the medical students are expected to investigate the simulated patient's chief complaint, obtain a thorough assessment of their medical history (medications, allergies, social history), and family history, then complete a physical examination, determine differential diagnoses, then write a patient note based on their findings.
To facilitate such an assessment, CAE LearningSpace offers a pre-structured section, called Step 2 CS Patient Note. It is available at the bottom of the New Item list when creating a Post-Encounter Learner checklist. Clicking it inserts a fully-prepared individual section into the checklist, consisting of items best fit for Step 2 CS assessment.
As the Step 2 CS assessment requires learners to phrase their responses, point values cannot be calculated by the system, scoring of responses necessitates the active participation of an evaluator, that is, score are determined by a professionally competent faculty member. Such an evaluation is referred to in LearningSpace as Open-Ended Question Scoring (OEQS).
IMPORTANT: As in case of all other item types, Step 2 CS Patient Note is NOT scored by default, consequently, if the default setting is not changed, answers will not be displayed for OEQS.
TIP: Based on user practice, it is recommended that the last item be set scored, more specifically scored by questionnaire, meaning that a Special Section part is created with the necessary questions along which the Step 2 CS section can be scored, then that Section is selected from the drop-down prompted when setting the scoring to Questionnaire.
Note, that the Special Section used for scoring does not necessarily have to be created within the same Case.
For further information, visit our Case Manager and Cases - How to pages, or watch our Case Manager Training Videos.