The Mount Sinai journal of medicine, New York
-
Comparative Study
Correlation between housestaff performance on the United States Medical Licensing Examination and standardized patient encounters.
There is interest in the use of "standardized patients" to assist in evaluating medical trainees' clinical skills, which may be difficult to evaluate with written exams alone. Previous studies of the validity of observed structured clinical exams have found low correlation with various written exams as well as with faculty evaluations. Since the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) results are often used by training programs in the selection of applicants, we assessed the correlation between performance on an observed structured clinical exam and the USMLE, steps 1 and 2, for internal medicine housestaff. ⋯ The low correlation between the USMLE and performance on a structured clinical exam suggests that either the written exam is a poor predictor of actual clinical performance, the small window of clinical skills measured by the structured clinical exam is inadequate, or the two methods evaluate different skill sets entirely. Our findings are consistent with previous work finding low correlations between structured clinical exams and accepted common means of evaluation, such as faculty evaluations, other written exams and program director assessments. The medical education community needs to develop an objective, valid method of measuring important, yet subjective, skill-sets such as interpersonal communication, empathy and efficient data collection.
-
The obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) is a common disorder, estimated to occur in 4% of males and 2% of females in the workforce. This incidence increases with age. Obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea is responsible for acute and chronic heart disease, but is a readily treatable disorder that is both underdiagnosed and underappreciated in health care. Because the cardiac consequences of untreated sleep apnea are so profound and the treatment relatively simple, the disorder needs to be recognized more frequently.