Better together: an assessor support roadmap

Assessors, in both clinical practice and academic settings, are pivotal in making judgements on learner performance to ensure members of the public are supported by graduates who are safe and competent practitioners. However, consistency of assessor judgements of learner performance has been a concern in directly observed clinical assessments such as workplace-based assessments (WBAs) and objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs). A range of sociocultural factors could influence the consistency of assessor judgements such as assessors' beliefs about the purpose of an assessment, their perception of the usefulness of the marking criteria, their expectations of learner competence and their idiosyncratic judgement practices. These inconsistencies affect the high-stakes decisions made regarding learner progression or feedback provided that could impact their career development.