No./Title: COM125/Procedures to Ensure Timely Submission of Summative Assessments	Resp. Office: Medical Education Approval Body: CUME	Effective Date: 12/20/21
Category: COM/UME	Last Review: N/A	Next Review: 12/20/24
Contact: Michael Whitt, Ph.D. Assoc. Dean for Medical Education	🕿 901-448-4634	🖂 mwhitt@uthsc.edu
Related Policy: COM107 – Grading for the MD Curriculum

POLICY

It is the policy of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) College of Medicine (COM) to have procedures in place to ensure the timely submission of student evaluations following clinical rotations.

RATIONALE AND PROCEDURE

The LCME requires that grades be submitted promptly after every course. As stated in Element 9.8: “A medical school has in place a system of fair and timely summative assessment of medical student achievement in each course and clerkship of the medical education program. Final grades are available within six weeks of the end of a course or clerkship”.

It is essential that evaluations be submitted in a timely manner by all faculty who participate in clinical rotations, indicating whether a student has achieved competency for the indicated Entrusted Professional Activities (EPAs), etc., since these evaluations are required to determine a student’s grade. To avoid late submissions the following procedural timeline has been developed.

• No later than the date of course completion, coordinators initiate reminders to evaluators from the eMedley system.
• At two (2) weeks after course completion the course coordinator notifies the course/clerkship director (CD) and evaluator of any evaluation/grade that has yet to be submitted (preferably by text message in addition to email). Faculty evaluators are responsible for reminding residents. If residents are not responsive the faculty member should contact the Program Director (PD).
• At three (3) weeks the coordinator notifies the CD, who in turn informs the Department Chair and Medical Education Associate and Assistant Deans of any evaluations/grades that have not been submitted, copying the evaluator on the correspondence. The chair will prompt the evaluator to complete submissions within the next week. If the missing evaluation is from a resident, the CD should contact the PD and the Associate Dean for Graduate Medical Education who will take steps to ensure submission.
• At four (4) weeks, the coordinator notifies the Executive Dean of any overdue evaluations/grades. The Dean then contacts the evaluator directly.
• At five (5) weeks, the coordinator notifies the department chair and the Executive Dean. The faculty member will get a warning letter in their file indicating failure to meet expectations for timely submission of grades, and the chair will include this in the faculty member’s annual evaluation. Other approaches to addressing the deficiency will be at the discretion of the chair.
• The number of late evaluations (past 5 weeks) will be considered in a department chair’s annual evaluation by the Executive Dean.

APPROVAL HISTORY

Effective: 12/20/21

Revised: N/A