Demographic attributes and knowledge acquisition among graduate-entry medical students.

Background: Recent changes to undergraduate (basic) medical education in Ireland have linked an expansion of student numbers with wide-ranging reforms. Medical schools have broadened access by admitting more mature students from diverse backgrounds and have increased their international student numbers. This has resulted in major changes to the demographic profile of students at Irish medical schools.

Cross-institutional progress testing: feasibility and value to a new medical school.

Objectives: This study aimed to examine the feasibility of using a progress test to compare the rate of knowledge acquisition among students at a new medical school with that of students at a comparable but long-established school.

Methods: As part of an ongoing strategy, we administered the McMaster Personal Progress Index (PPI) on four occasions to the first two cohorts of students enrolled in the graduate-entry medical programme at the University of Limerick. We compared mean PPI scores for students at comparable stages in their courses at both schools.