Medical education in India is going through an overhaul with the introduction of a new competency-based curriculum since 2019. One of the proposed changes which has been notified by the National Medical Commission is the introduction of an Exit Exam for all medical graduates, called the National Exit Examination (NExT). The format of this examination will have multiple choice questions (MCQs), 60-70% of which will be based on case scenarios. These questions will be of higher cognitive level and will be application-based. In view of this it is imperative that faculty are trained in writing good quality items.
The Medical Education Unit (MEU) of MGIMS Sevagram conducted two workshops on 17 February 2024 and 16 March 2024, where faculty were trained in construction of good quality scenario-based MCQs. A total of 58 faculty members were trained in MCQ construction in these workshops. Speaking about the initiative, Workshop Coordinator Dr Smita Jategaonkar said, “This is a training programme which was suggested by the Honorable Vice Chancellor of Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS) by Dr Madhuri Kanitkar. The workshop is important in view of the upcoming NExT planned by NMC.” The resource persons from the Medical Education Unit for these workshops were: Dr Atul Tayade, Dr Chetna Maliye, Dr Sonia Jain, Dr Smita Jategaonkar, Dr Devesh Gosavi, Dr Anupama Gupta, Dr Ranjana Kale, Dr Anshu, Dr Jwalant Waghmare, Dr Abhishek Raut, Dr Subodh S Gupta and Dr Pooja Batra.
Coordinator of the Medical Education Unit, Dr Anshu said, “Writing case vignettes requires practice and effort. Two years ago we had conducted an Advanced Workshop on MCQs where our focus was on preparing question banks using the MOODLE platform. This time around, we followed a more structured plan, where all faculty were first asked to submit MCQs, these were improved during the workshop in group sessions. In the next level, these questions were validated by both subject experts and MEU experts.” Dr AK Shukla, Dean MGIMS who was at the helm of this activity said, “We want to prepare question banks of good quality MCQs which can be used to train our students for the NExT examination. Each department has now started compiling scenario-based MCQs for their use. We would like to prepare our students for the new changes in the curriculum.” Participants at the workshop expressed satisfaction in learning the key principles of designing scenarios which were local and authentic to the Indian context.