Proper interpretation of the results of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) is important for program directors, residents, and faculty who advise applicants about applying for residency positions. We suspected that applicants often misinterpreted their performance in relationship to others who took the same examination. In 2005, 54 consecutive applicants to the University of Tennessee, College of Medicine internal medicine residency program were asked to complete a brief survey about their performance on Parts 1 and 2 of the USMLE exam. When asked what percentile their Part I score represented, slightly over one in ten were unsure or did not know, and nearly three out of five wrote in their two-digit score. Of the 15 who wrote in another number, only a third were within ten percentile points of their estimated percentile. Similar results were seen for Part II. A higher percentage of international medical graduates (IMGs) than U.S. applicants responded to the percentile question with their two-digit scores (79% vs. 50% p = .08). Applicants to residency programs frequently misinterpret their performance on the USMLE compared to their peers. Unless they are high performers, those who misinterpret their two-digit scores as percentiles markedly overestimate their performance. The sponsors of the USMLE should discontinue reporting the two-digit score and consider re-instating the reporting of percentiles.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10459-007-9084-0 | DOI Listing |
Am J Ind Med
January 2025
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health, New York, New York, USA.
Background: Housecleaning work has been characterized as precarious employment with unstable work hours, arbitrary and low pay and benefits, and exposures to chemical, physical, and psychosocial stressors. Understanding how interpersonal power dynamics between workers and clients, a component of precarious work, contributes to work exposures can inform and improve prevention programs.
Methods: We used reflexive thematic analysis of data from seven focus groups with Latinx immigrant housecleaners in New York City to explore workers' experience of interpersonal power dynamics with their clients-whom they referred to as their "employers"-and its influences on working conditions.
Am J Community Psychol
January 2025
Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Services, Illinois Department of Central Management and Triton College, Springfield, Illinois, USA.
Immigrants and refugees in the United States often face significant barriers in accessing social services, including mental health support, legal assistance, ESL or related education, housing, vocational training, workforce resources, transportation, and citizenship support. This article explores the strengths and challenges of community-based organizations welcoming centers (CBO WC) in Illinois that serve these populations, including people with disabilities, in culturally appropriate and inclusive ways. The Immigrant and Refugee-Led Capacity Development Network of Illinois, based at the University of Illinois Chicago, collaborated with the state's Office of Welcoming Centers to explore the service capacities of 17 CBO grantees.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProtein Sci
February 2025
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Center for RNA Biology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
Loz1 is a zinc-responsive transcription factor in fission yeast that maintains cellular zinc homeostasis by repressing the expression of genes required for zinc uptake in high zinc conditions. Previous deletion analysis of Loz1 found a region containing two tandem CH zinc-fingers and an upstream "accessory domain" rich in histidine, lysine, and arginine residues to be sufficient for zinc-dependent DNA binding and gene repression. Here we report unexpected biophysical properties of this pair of seemingly classical CH zinc fingers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLiver Int
February 2025
Department of Pediatrics, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, Colorado, USA.
Background And Aims: Maternal obesity increases the risk of the paediatric form of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), affecting up to 30% of youth, but the developmental origins remain poorly understood.
Methods: Using a Japanese macaque model, we investigated the impact of maternal Western-style diet (mWSD) or chow diet followed by postweaning WSD (pwWSD) or chow diet focusing on bile acid (BA) homeostasis and hepatic fibrosis in livers from third-trimester fetuses and 3-year-old juvenile offspring.
Results: Juveniles exposed to mWSD had increased hepatic collagen I/III content and stellate cell activation in portal regions.
J Cachexia Sarcopenia Muscle
February 2025
Division of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science, Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
Background: With a decline of 17β-estradiol (E2) at menopause, E2 has been implicated in the accompanied loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength. We aimed at characterizing transcriptomic responses of skeletal muscle to E2 in female mice, testing the hypothesis that genes and pathways related to contraction and maintenance of mass are differentially expressed in ovariectomized mice with and without E2 treatment.
Methods: Soleus and tibialis anterior (TA) muscles from C57BL/6 ovariectomized mice treated with placebo (OVX) or E2 (OVX + E2) for 60 days, or from skeletal muscle-specific ERα knockout (skmERαKO) mice and wild-type littermates (skmERαWT), were used for genome-wide expression profiling, quantitative real-time PCR and immunoblotting.
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