Analysis of the krok1 and histology subtests dynamics of students of Dnipropetrovsk medical academy

Abstract

Оbjective control of the level of knowledge in medical universities is the basis for guaranteeing the quality of education. There are a lot of examples of universal systems designed to evaluate medical students in different countries, including USMLE, IFOM and others; particularly in Ukraine Krok 1 licensed exam is conducted since 2005. Results of Krok 1 are also used for ranking medical universities at the national level. The purpose of our work was to conduct a comparative analysis of the results of the licensing exam Krok 1, in particular, a histology subtest, among students of specialties 221 “Dentistry” and 222 “Medicine” and different languages of education (Ukrainian, Russian, English) in Dnipropetrovsk medical academy. We have revealed that all the analyzed contingents of students (DMA as well as Ukrainian) in the majority of observation periods from 2014 to 2019 had lower average results on histology compared to average Krok 1 results. This could be explained by low quota of histological tests for students of specialty 222 “Medicine” which is 4-6%, and absence of the threshold level for doing each particular subject. These conditions do not motivate students of the third course to recollect a complicated discipline that ended more than a year ago. Another problem is in the content of anchor questions in Krok 1 booklets: the number of such questions are distributed unevenly among booklets of different years and different languages of study. As a result, students with different languages of study are put in unequal conditions. In addition, the variation in the number of anchor tests from year to year, the lack of a declared quota of such tests disorients students and makes it difficult to develop algorithms for preparing for Krok 1.