Surgical Trainee Performance and Alignment With Surgical Program Director Expectations.

Objective: To examine the alignment between graduating surgical trainee operative performance and a prior survey of surgical program director expectations.

Background: Surgical trainee operative training is expected to prepare residents to independently perform clinically important surgical procedures.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional observational study of US general surgery residents' rated operative performance for Core general surgery procedures.

Considerations for using race and ethnicity as quantitative variables in medical education research.

Throughout history, race and ethnicity have been used as key descriptors to categorize and label individuals. The use of these concepts as variables can impact resources, policy, and perceptions in medical education. Despite the pervasive use of race and ethnicity as quantitative variables, it is unclear whether researchers use them in their proper context.

Does Performance on Evidence-Based Medicine and Urgent Clinical Scenarios Assessments Deteriorate During the Fourth Year of Medical School? Findings From One Institution.

Purpose: The fourth year of medical school (M4) should prepare students for residency yet remains generally unstructured, with ill-defined goals. The primary aim of this study was to determine whether there were performance changes in evidence-based medicine (EBM) and urgent clinical scenarios (UCS) assessments before and after M4 year.

Method: University of Michigan Medical School graduates who matched into internship at Michigan Medicine completed identical assessments on EBM and UCS at the beginning of M4 year and 13 months later during postgraduate year 1 (PGY1) orientation.

Multiple Mini Interview Performance and Career Maturity related to Medicine.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) is used to determine the most suitable candidates for the medical profession.

Does Reducing Clerkship Lengths by 25% Affect Medical Student Performance and Perceptions?

Purpose: Transforming a medical school curriculum wherein students enter clerkships earlier could result in two cohorts in clerkships simultaneously during the transition. To avoid overlapping cohorts at the University of Michigan Medical School, the length of all required clerkships was decreased by 25% during the 2016-2017 academic year, without instituting other systematic structural changes. The authors hypothe sized that the reduction in clerkship duration would result in decreases in student perfor mance and changes in student perceptions.

Generalizability of Competency Assessment Scores Across and Within Clerkships: How Students, Assessors, and Clerkships Matter.

Purpose: Many factors influence the reliable assessment of medical students' competencies in the clerkships. The purpose of this study was to determine how many clerkship competency assessment scores were necessary to achieve an acceptable threshold of reliability.

Method: Clerkship student assessment data were collected during the 2015-2016 academic year as part of the medical school assessment program at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Pushing Critical Thinking Skills With Multiple-Choice Questions: Does Bloom's Taxonomy Work?

Medical school assessments should foster the development of higher-order thinking skills to support clinical reasoning and a solid foundation of knowledge. Multiple-choice questions (MCQs) are commonly used to assess student learning, and well-written MCQs can support learner engagement in higher levels of cognitive reasoning such as application or synthesis of knowledge. Bloom's taxonomy has been used to identify MCQs that assess students' critical thinking skills, with evidence suggesting that higher-order MCQs support a deeper conceptual understanding of scientific process skills.

The influence of MCAT and GPA preadmission academic metrics on interview scores.

Medical school admissions interviews are used to assess applicants' nonacademic characteristics as advocated by the Association of American Medical Colleges' Advancing Holistic Review Initiative. The objective of this study is to determine whether academic metrics continue to significantly influence interviewers' scores in holistic processes by blinding interviewers to applicants' undergraduate grade point averages (uGPA) and Medical College Admission Test (MCAT). This study examines academic and demographic predictors of interview scores for two applicant cohorts at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Climbing Bloom's taxonomy pyramid: Lessons from a graduate histology course.

Bloom's taxonomy was adopted to create a subject-specific scoring tool for histology multiple-choice questions (MCQs). This Bloom's Taxonomy Histology Tool (BTHT) was used to analyze teacher- and student-generated quiz and examination questions from a graduate level histology course. Multiple-choice questions using histological images were generally assigned a higher BTHT level than simple text questions.

Hidden item variance in multiple mini-interview scores.

The extant literature has largely ignored a potentially significant source of variance in multiple mini-interview (MMI) scores by "hiding" the variance attributable to the sample of attributes used on an evaluation form. This potential source of hidden variance can be defined as rating items, which typically comprise an MMI evaluation form. Due to its multi-faceted, repeated measures format, reliability for the MMI has been primarily evaluated using generalizability (G) theory.

Variance in attributes assessed by the multiple mini-interview.

Introduction: While the extant literature has explored the impact of stations on multiple mini- interview (MMI) scores, the influence of station scenarios has been largely overlooked.

Method: A subset of MMI scores was purposively sampled from admissions data at one US medical school. Generalizability (G) theory was used to estimate variance components attributable to applicants and two facets of generalization - scenarios, the content of the station, and items, the attributes assessed.