Purpose
There are few competency-based assessment systems assessing evidence-based medicine (EBM) knowledge and bedside practice of EBM.1,2,3 We created a multiple-choice question (MCQ) quiz and standardized patient (SP) encounter that measured students’ ability to appraise, apply and communicate information.

Methods
The formative assessment system created by consensus consisted of a 30-item MCQ quiz which measured knowledge and skills related to appraising and applying the evidence. The performance-based SP assessment measured team-based ability to synthesize and communicate findings. This assessment was administered to medical students at the end of preclinical phase of their curriculum.

Results
270/289 second-year medical students participated in this activity and 82% passed the quiz. Preliminary results showed that the quiz had an average difficulty of 0.68/0.69, discrimination of 0.29/0.3 and Cronbachs alpha of 0.61/0.62 for questions on apply/appraise aspects of EPA 7 respectively. All students in one campus participated in the simulation activity in 17 teams of three or four students. All teams were able to effectively convey that there were limitations with the study and 94% of teams correctly advised the patient to not use the medicine discussed in the abstract. The SP was very satisfied or satisfied with all teams in their ability to convey the information.

Conclusion
This assessment system was created to help assess student readiness in key components of Entrustable Professional Activity 7 (EPA7) 5 - appraise information and communicate with patients if the information applies to them. The quiz demonstrates adequate content validity, and item discrimination for a formative assessment while the simulation provides students opportunities to improve their ability to communicate with SP's if the information applies to them. Assessing medical student readiness for appraising information and communicating this with patients using multimodal methods should be considered in assessment of EPA 7.