Demonstration of Portfolios to Assess Competency of Residents

Residency educators are identifying approaches to measure resident competence. Portfolios are well suited since they require work already completed as part of patient care where competency must be demonstrated. This paper describes assessment of the reliability and validity of portfolios in a psychiatry residency program. This was a cross-sectional study across 4 years of residency education. Using guidelines, 18 residents assembled portfolios containing five entries chosen from 13 skills. Trained raters scored the portfolios. Residents and faculty were interviewed about their perceptions. Generalizability results indicated five entries and two raters were sufficient for relative decisions. Six entries or a third rater would be sufficient for absolute decisions. Portfolio scores tended to improve with years of training and correlated with psychiatric knowledge but not clinical performance. Residents and faculty identified benefits to assembling a portfolio. Portfolios incorporate tasks embedded in the residency to provide evidence of resident competency. The results support that the score is reliable and valid.