Portfolios in personal and professional development

Abstract

Portfolios serve three main goals in medical education: monitoring and planning learner development, assessing performance, and stimulating reflection. This chapter focuses on the following topics: diversity of portfolios use of portfolios for the monitoring and planning of competency development portfolio assessment use of portfolios to stimulate reflection. The evidence base for portfolios in medical education is summarized. The portfolio approach has theoretical as well as practical merits. It can capture performance and development in the workplace using qualitative information that can take into account unique characteristics of specific workplaces. In this way, the portfolio completes the assessment landscape by enabling assessment at Miller’s ‘does’ level. For a portfolio to be effective, certain conditions must be fulfilled. Probably the most crucial factor is the mentor: a person with whom the learner discusses the content of his/her portfolio.