Assessments play a crucial role in evaluating a student’s knowledge and skills, especially in the medical field. At BPS Assessment, we understand the importance of creating high-quality assessments, which accurately assess student’s ability to prescribe medication safety and effectively. In this blog, we’ll take you behind the scenes, giving you a glimpse of how our team of experts crafts our assessments so that you have the best prescribing resources available for your students.
Utilising Drug Bank Resources
The first step in crafting our assessments is to tap into the valuable resources available on the BPS Assessment platform, the Drug Bank. This comprehensive database provides our assessment writers with a wealth of information on medications, drug interactions, dosages, and more. Using the Drug Bank, our UK prescribing experts can create questions that accurately reflect the real-world scenarios you may encounter in your clinical practice.
Adhering to the PSA Blueprint
Each assessment question is created to adhere to the UK Prescribing Safety Assessment blueprint. This blueprint outlines the specific competencies and knowledge areas that are expected of foundation doctors and assesses 8 key areas.
Our team ensures that every question we create closely adheres to these guidelines, covering a wide range of topics related to safe and effective prescribing; from prescription writing to drug monitoring and calculations. Each area is represented by an individual question item style in our assessments, highlighted in the graphic below:
This alignment guarantees that your trainees are being assessed on the skills and knowledge that matter most in their future healthcare practice.
Peer Review for Quality Assurance
Quality is of paramount importance in assessment creation, which is why every question undergoes a rigorous peer review process. After our experts draft a question, it is carefully reviewed by a panel of experienced peers. This panel includes seasoned healthcare professionals and educators who possess a deep understanding of the PSA and its objectives. They assess each question for accuracy, relevance, and adherence to the PSA blueprint.
Author Revision and Finalisation
Based on the feedback from the peer review panel, the original author of the question revises it as necessary. This may involve refining the wording, adjusting the mark scheme, and enhancing the explanation of answers to ensure clarity. The goal is to create questions that are fair, challenging, and reflective of real-world prescribing scenarios.
By the time a question is finalised, it has undergone multiple iterations and revisions, guaranteeing that it meets the highest standards of quality and aligns perfectly with the PSA’s objectives.
Behind every successful assessment at BPS Assessment is a well-defined process that combines the expertise of UK prescribing experts, adherence to the PSA blueprint, and rigorous peer review. We take pride in our commitment to providing you with assessments that accurately assess prescribing skills, ensuring that candidates are well-prepared for the challenges of real-world clinical practice.
Utilising BPS Assessment resources can empower institutions to prepare their students, guiding them to reach a level of competence in prescribing medication that ensures both safety and effectiveness, thereby significantly reducing the risk of patient incidents arising from medication errors.
