A clinical evaluation is the processes and procedures carried out to assess the competence of a health professional in the application of their area of expertise in a clinical setting. There are a variety of methods implemented by health managers and professionals to assess themselves or other health professionals, along with a wide range of tools used to assist in the process. The purpose of the clinical evaluation is to determine the level of competence that the health professional exhibits in his field and to identify areas for improvement. Clinical assessments are typically ongoing, beginning during school and continuing through careers to varying degrees.
The most commonly used methods in clinical assessment include recording critical incidents, conducting observations and case studies, keeping diaries, and even implementing self-assessment methods. Observation is often a key method implemented in which a primary mentor is assigned to the healthcare professional to observe their practice and advise on areas for improvement. By making use of observation, critical incidents will focus specifically on the behavior of a professional in a given situation. In particular, the behaviors of greatest concern are those with a significant impact on results. By closely monitoring these behaviors, mentors will document the incident and associated reactions to help professionals better understand their actions and focus on areas for improvement.
Competence in health care practice, whether for a doctor, a nurse, or even a nurse's aid, is crucial to patient care and safety. As such, clinical assessment is typically an ongoing process not only performed by peers or mentors, but also used by many healthcare professionals to assess their own competency and achieve improvement. Most often for self-assessment, health professionals will keep diaries, write case studies on specific situations, and use a variety of self-assessment techniques to help the process. Those techniques often include the use of video recorders to capture their actions in practice for later analysis, while using scales to track and rate performance.
Constant and continuous clinical evaluation, whether carried out through self-assessment or under the direction of an authority, is intended to increase the performance of both the health professional and the entire health organization. Total competency is often assessed to include attributable behaviors and task outcomes, as well as professional approach to ethics and values that impact a particular competency. In general, the process is intended to boost healthcare performance, but will sometimes inevitably identify incompetence and weed it out to include relief from healthcare professionals in some cases.