De korte praktijkbeoordeling

Conflict of interest and financial support: disclosure forms provided by the authors are available along with the full text of this article at www.ntvg.nl; search for A5587, click on ‘Belangenverstrengeling’ (‘Conflict of interest’).

• The mini-clinical evaluation exercise (mini-CEX) is a sort of test in which the assessor’s evaluation is based on a short observation of the resident in a clinical situation.

• A mini-CEX is not an examination but a useful educational instrument to monitor and to foster the resident’s development.

• The central concepts of a good mini-CEX are ‘short’ (limited both in content and duration) and ‘often’ (the more frequent the better).

• It is important the assessor should provide feedback as soon as possible after the evaluation; this feedback should be constructive and task-oriented and be presented to the resident in a credible manner.

• Multiple observations by different assessors will ensure that the overall picture of the resident’s progress is more reliable.

• Because the particular value of the mini-CEX lies mainly in the repetition involved, we would like to replace the ‘E’ for ‘evaluation’ with the ‘G’ for ‘guidance’.