I'm giving a quick talk on CASPer today.
So for those of you who haven't done a CASPer, it's basically a computer based assessment
that medical schools use to assess your professional skills like leadership, communication, teamwork,
ethical reasoning before they even get you into the interview room.
And they key here is that before they get you into the interview room, so if you're
not doing well on your CASPer, you're going to be eliminated from doing your interview.
So I'm just going to be going over kind of our general approach to answering a CASPer
question and then just giving you some tips in terms of how you should be preparing and
what you can do to prepare.
So in terms of general approach, you'll get a video prompt and then you'll have 5 minutes
to type in an answer and then you'll have 3 prompts to answer.
So the most important thing here is that you answer the first prompt that pops out at you.
So don't waste time trying to think up answers for the other prompts that you're not really
getting just think about getting at that first answer because at least that way you'll get
some marks if not great marks for giving a good answer.
Even if you don't address every prompt, you can still get full marks on the question so
just jump into the first one that you understand and go for it.
The next thing or the next tip I'm going to give you is to actually every problem you
see you should be thinking what is the problem.
So, for example if they give you a scenario where there's, you're the assistant coach
on a soccer team and the head coach seems to be texting one of the players a lot and
you've seen her getting out of his car before practice and you know the prompt's trying
to lead you down to suspecting there's a romantic relationship going on type of road.
So, if you're trying to identify the problem here the problem is this you know potential
lack of professional boundaries by a soccer coach.
There's definitely a power differential between the soccer coach and the player and you know
he could be exploiting that power differential.
Especially depending on the player's age and things like that, assuming this is a university
team, the player may be 18 but still, it could be a little hazy there.
So you identify that main problem and then the next thing you want to do is identify
how the problem affects all the surrounding people.
So I tell my students to almost envision a ripple effect.
I'm a very visual person so I like to think in terms of actual visual mnemonics so at
the middle of your ripple, you have the coach and the player and the impact of this relationship
on them and the player specifically and then around that you have the team and you can
include yourself in the team and further out you have the university, its reputation and
society and how they view the university and how they view this type of relationship.
So, as you consider how the problem is going to affect the main players as well as everyone
surrounding them, you need to go and gather more information.
So if I was faced with this scenario I would want to know a couple things.
First of all, what's the university's policy on this type of relationship between a player
and a coach.
Is it banned, is it okay, you need to know that in order to address the problem.
Second of all, is there even a relationship going on.
Is she, you know maybe she lives in an inconvenient area and he just picks her up, the texting
is because he's driving her to and from practice.
You need to talk to both individuals individually and figure out what's going on and how they're
feeling about it.
After you've gathered your information, the next step is to come up with a solution.
So you need to come up with a solution that's going to address the problem in the most ethically
you know sound way that considers the viewpoints of everyone you've identified and usually
we'll do this in an if then format.
So for this problem, I might say you know, if there's a relationship going on and if
I've determined that the university policy is against the relationship, I'm going to
talk to both individuals informed of the policy and ask them that they discontinue the relationship
immediately.
If they don't, then I'll be forced to report the relationship to the university.
I might even ask that the coach reports himself in order to protect other players against
future liaisons or something along those lines depending where you want to take it.
If there's no university policy against it, given these are two consenting adults it may
be okay for them to have a relationship, but in the context of the other players and the
way this has potential to negatively impact team dynamic, I would still talk to both individuals
and strongly discourage them from pursuing a romantic relationship or at least discourage
them from pursuing it until after the season is over.
Given our goal as a team I think this would be the most prudent course of action.
So that way you're laying out the scenario in if and then format and you're addressing
the different possible permutations of the question.
The ability to do this shows you know high level reasoning and the ability to professionally
deal with problems.
The important thing here as well that you will note is that I'm not being judgemental,
I'm not jumping to conclusions, I'm not taking things at face value and just assuming that
there's a romantic relationship going on.
There may not be, there could be other things that are happening in this scenario and it's
important that you do that information gathering step and figure out exactly what's going on
before you decide on a course of action.
So, assume you've done all of those things, so how do you actually prepare for a CASPer.
So like I said, the CASPer it's you get a scenario and then you have 5 minutes to answer
3 questions.
So, it's really tight.
It's really challenging even for me, I'm a fast typer, I'm computer literate, it's really
challenging.
to get through all 3 of those questions.
So the best thing you can do for yourself is do a simulation CASPer.
So practice in a test-like scenario.
Almost like a game-day type of practice.
You want to feel the pressure, you want to know how am I going to navigate my mouse around
the screen during the CASPer, some students try using their left hand but really just
go with what you're comfortable with.
And how are you actually going to process and get through these questions.
Aside from the technical part, you need to practice actually you know giving good content
in your answers.
So, the best way to do that is obviously practice, use the format I just gave you but also to
get professional feedback.
So a lot of students they don't realize that they're not addressing the global aspect or
that their solutions have a lot of holes or flaws in them.
So professional feedback or feedback from someone you really trust can be a great way
to figure out whether you're answering the questions appropriately.
So, that's it for CASPer today, thank you all for joining me, and I will see you again
next week!