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Making the grade: licensing examination performance by medical school accreditation status

BACKGROUND: Accreditation systems strive to ensure the quality of undergraduate (basic) medical education and encourage ongoing improvements. Despite increasing global emphasis on quality assurance activities, there is limited research linking accreditation of medical education to improved student a...

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Autores principales: van Zanten, Marta, Boulet, John R., Shiffer, Christine D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8758986/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35031043
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03101-7
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author van Zanten, Marta
Boulet, John R.
Shiffer, Christine D.
author_facet van Zanten, Marta
Boulet, John R.
Shiffer, Christine D.
author_sort van Zanten, Marta
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Accreditation systems strive to ensure the quality of undergraduate (basic) medical education and encourage ongoing improvements. Despite increasing global emphasis on quality assurance activities, there is limited research linking accreditation of medical education to improved student and graduate outcomes. The purpose of this study is to compare the United States Medical Licensing Examination® (USMLE®) performance of students and graduates who attended international medical schools accredited by an agency recognized by the World Federation of Medical Education (WFME) to individuals who attended schools that did not meet this criterion. METHODS: During the 2018-2020 study period, 39,650 individuals seeking Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates® (ECFMG®) certification took one or more USMLE examinations. We cross-tabulated USMLE performance (first-attempt pass/fail result) and medical school accreditation status. RESULTS: Individuals seeking ECFMG certification who attended international medical schools accredited by an agency recognized by WFME had higher or comparable USMLE first-attempt pass rates compared to individuals who attended medical schools that did not meet this criterion. CONCLUSIONS: Implementing and maintaining meaningful accreditation systems requires substantial resources. These results provide important positive evidence that external evaluation of educational programs is associated, on average, with better educational outcomes, including in the domains of basic science, clinical knowledge, and clinical skills performance.
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spelling pubmed-87589862022-01-14 Making the grade: licensing examination performance by medical school accreditation status van Zanten, Marta Boulet, John R. Shiffer, Christine D. BMC Med Educ Research BACKGROUND: Accreditation systems strive to ensure the quality of undergraduate (basic) medical education and encourage ongoing improvements. Despite increasing global emphasis on quality assurance activities, there is limited research linking accreditation of medical education to improved student and graduate outcomes. The purpose of this study is to compare the United States Medical Licensing Examination® (USMLE®) performance of students and graduates who attended international medical schools accredited by an agency recognized by the World Federation of Medical Education (WFME) to individuals who attended schools that did not meet this criterion. METHODS: During the 2018-2020 study period, 39,650 individuals seeking Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates® (ECFMG®) certification took one or more USMLE examinations. We cross-tabulated USMLE performance (first-attempt pass/fail result) and medical school accreditation status. RESULTS: Individuals seeking ECFMG certification who attended international medical schools accredited by an agency recognized by WFME had higher or comparable USMLE first-attempt pass rates compared to individuals who attended medical schools that did not meet this criterion. CONCLUSIONS: Implementing and maintaining meaningful accreditation systems requires substantial resources. These results provide important positive evidence that external evaluation of educational programs is associated, on average, with better educational outcomes, including in the domains of basic science, clinical knowledge, and clinical skills performance. BioMed Central 2022-01-14 /pmc/articles/PMC8758986/ /pubmed/35031043 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03101-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
van Zanten, Marta
Boulet, John R.
Shiffer, Christine D.
Making the grade: licensing examination performance by medical school accreditation status
title Making the grade: licensing examination performance by medical school accreditation status
title_full Making the grade: licensing examination performance by medical school accreditation status
title_fullStr Making the grade: licensing examination performance by medical school accreditation status
title_full_unstemmed Making the grade: licensing examination performance by medical school accreditation status
title_short Making the grade: licensing examination performance by medical school accreditation status
title_sort making the grade: licensing examination performance by medical school accreditation status
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8758986/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35031043
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03101-7
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