Selecting medical students: An unresolved challenge

Abstract

Despite the abundant supply of academically outstanding applicants to medical schools in most countries the regularly recurring debate in the academic literature, and indeed sometimes in the popular media, implies that admissions committees are still getting it wrong in a significant number of instances. How can this be so when our procedures are directed unashamedly at selecting the most highly academically and intellectually qualified students in the expectation that they will make the best doctors? Perhaps it is time for a radical change in emphasis. Instead of endeavouring to differentiate among the top ranks of a pool of outstandingly qualified applicants, the selection effort might be better focused on identifying those potentially unsuitable in terms of their non-academic personal qualities to ensure they do not gain entry. The account that follows is an analysis of the problems of medical student selection and offers a potential solution - a solution that was first suggested in the medical literature 70 years ago, but not adopted. It is the present author's contention that the cycle of debate will continue to recur unless such an approach is pursued.

Scoring method of a Situational Judgment Test: influence on internal consistency reliability, adverse impact and correlation with personality?

“…Adding non-cognitive-based measures to cognitivebased measures may improve the predictive quality of a selection procedure (KulatungaMoruzi and Norman 2002;Lucieer et al 2015;Powis 2015). Non-cognitive-based selection instruments with good validity and reliability are essential for this purpose, because selection into medical school is highly competitive, with the number of applicants greatly exceeding the number of available places.…”

På tide med egnethetstest for medisinstudenter

“…Det er et skifte fra en hierarkisk og ekspertfokusert struktur mot en mer pasientsentrert og teambasert modell der samarbeid mellom ulike yrkesgrupper står sentralt (1). Endringer i demografi, sykdomspanorama, ny viten og teknologiske fremskritt påvirker studiets innhold og struktur, og samarbeid mellom ulike helseprofesjoner og egenskaper som kommunikasjonsevner, troverdighet, robusthet og empati vektlegges i større grad (2).…”

Identifying the bad apples

“…so that such things do not happen again (Powis 2015). In particular, we have seen increased focus on ''non-cognitive'' factors, particularly professionalism.…”

“…So far so good. Now let us imagine using these data for selection, by establishing a threshold score that students must attain to be considered for admission-a policy directly advocated by Powis (2015). We can look at the proportion of each group who are accepted or rejected, keeping in mind that our real denominator is 70 cases who will eventually get in trouble with the state board, and 6260 controls who won't.…”