Professionalism and clinical short answer question marking with machine learning

Intern Med J. 2022 Jul;52(7):1268-1271. doi: 10.1111/imj.15839.

Abstract

Machine learning may assist in medical student evaluation. This study involved scoring short answer questions administered at three centres. Bidirectional encoder representations from transformers were particularly effective for professionalism question scoring (accuracy ranging from 41.6% to 92.5%). In the scoring of 3-mark professionalism questions, as compared with clinical questions, machine learning had a lower classification accuracy (P < 0.05). The role of machine learning in medical professionalism evaluation warrants further investigation.

Keywords: artificial intelligence; medical education; natural language processing; performance evaluation.

MeSH terms

  • Humans
  • Machine Learning
  • Professionalism*
  • Students, Medical*