The Use of Non-physician Evaluators in Providing Narrative Assessment of Medical Students

The assessment of student performance in undergraduate medical education has traditionally been the domain of physicians and has not considered assessment by non-physicians. The authors demonstrated the advantage of using narrative assessment of 4th year medical students by nurses in two critical care units. Nurse assessors augmented the narrative assessment provided by physicians and enhanced the portrait of the students’ performance, especially in the non-cognitive domains of teamwork, professionalism and communication.