BACKGROUND: The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Fellowship (FRACGP) examination remains the sole point of entry to Fellowship of the RACGP for registrars in the Australian General Practice Training Program. It is also used by 'practice eligible route' candidates. It may have been some time since candidates studied for any exam, and the prospect is often daunting. Like ally examination, the FRACGP has its own attendant myths and legends on what you must do to pass. OBJECTIVE: This article recounts the study habits of a group of three general practice registrars who sat the FRACGP examination at the end of 2003. It attempts to give a light hearted account of their study techniques in the hope of dispelling some of the fear and mystery surrounding the exam. DISCUSSION: Despite the seemingly casual approach described below, all the authors passed without suffering grievous psychological injury, and most of their patients seem to have survived as well. (+info)
Overseas trained doctors. How to prepare for a fellowship exam.
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Exam preparation is a stressful time and everyone wants to prepare effectively to do as well as they can. It is a personal challenge that, successfully overcome, carries the reward of peer recognition and acceptance. However, for the overseas trained doctor it is not easy to write a fellowship exam when one is not sure either where or how to start, where to get help and resources, and how to proceed. I encountered many difficulties in preparing for the Fellowship of The Royal Australian College of General Practitioner (FRACGP) exam, and in overcoming these difficulties, thought the knowledge acquired may be useful to others facing the same task. (+info)
Online clinical reasoning assessment with the Script Concordance test: a feasibility study.
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BACKGROUND: The script concordance (SC) test is an assessment tool that measures capacity to solve ill-defined problems, that is, reasoning in context of uncertainty. This tool has been used up to now mainly in medicine. The purpose of this pilot study is to assess the feasibility of the test delivered on the Web to French urologists. METHODS: The principle of SC test construction and the development of the Web site are described. A secure Web site was created with two sequential modules: (a) The first one for the reference panel (n = 26) with two sub-tasks: to validate the content of the test and to elaborate the scoring system; (b) The second for candidates with different levels of experience in Urology: Board certified urologists, residents, medical students (5 or 6th year). Minimum expected number of participants is 150 for urologists, 100 for residents and 50 for medical students. Each candidate is provided with an individual access code to this Web site. He/she may complete the Script Concordance test several times during his/her curriculum. RESULTS: The Web site has been operational since April 2004. The reference panel validated the test in June of the same year during the annual seminar of the French Society of Urology. The Web site is available for the candidates since September 2004. In six months, 80% of the target figure for the urologists, 68% of the target figure for the residents and 20% of the target figure for the student passed the test online. During these six months, no technical problem was encountered. CONCLUSION: The feasibility of the web-based SC test is successful as two-thirds of the expected number of participants was included within six months. Psychometric properties (validity, reliability) of the test will be evaluated on a large scale (N = 300). If positive, educational impact of this assessment tool will be useful to help urologists during their curriculum for the acquisition of clinical reasoning skills, which is crucial for professional competence. (+info)
Relationship between performance in dental school and performance on a dental licensure examination: an eight-year study.
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This study assessed relationships between academic performance in dental school and "first attempt" performance on a state dental licensure examination for 1996-2003 graduates from the University of Florida College of Dentistry (UFCD). The 524 graduates were ranked into quartiles based on graduating GPA. Using analysis of variance (ANOVA), the students' mean exam score (or exam section score) for each respective quartile (n=131) was compared with mean score for graduates in the combined four quartiles (n=524). ANOVA assessments, by quartile, were performed for the following six measures: 1) overall composite score on the dental licensure exam, 2) clinical periodontics section, 3) clinical amalgam section, 4) combination of clinical periodontics and clinical amalgam, 5) laboratory (manikin exam) with a written prosthodontic exam, and 6) manikin exam without the prosthodontic exam. For the overall exam and all exam sections, a significant (p<0.001) relationship was found between higher mean exam scores and academic ranking in quartile 1. A significant relationship was found between performance (lower mean scores) and ranking in quartile 4 for all exam sections, with the exception of the clinical periodontal section. The results of this study indicate a correlation between performance in dental school and performance on the Florida dental licensure exam for 1996-2003 UFCD graduates. (+info)
Outcome assessment of the Dental Early Acceptance Program.
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The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA) Dental School recruits a student body from a wide number of undergraduate institutions, primarily in Texas. One method supporting this effort is the Dental Early Acceptance Program (DEAP). This program is unique in that it grants conditional acceptance to dental school during a student's first year of undergraduate education and admission upon completion of three years of college coursework as directed by the student's undergraduate academic advisor. The purpose of this study was to assess and compare the academic performance of DEAP students to students accepted through the standard competitive admissions process. The academic records of all students matriculating into our dental school between 1993 and 1996 were examined. National Board Dental Examination Parts I and II scores, the cumulative dental school and college GPAs, DAT scores, and demographic data were recorded. The data were analyzed descriptively and statistically. Graduation rates were 92 percent for DEAP students and 94 percent for standard admissions students. Comparison of college cumulative GPA between the two groups showed no statistically significant difference. A significant difference was found between the groups in their dental school cumulative GPA. In a comparison of National Board Examination scores, DEAP students had a significantly lower NBDE Part I mean score (82.9) than standard admissions students (85.8). DEAP students also showed significantly lower NBDE Part II scores (80.4) than standard admissions students (82.4). (+info)
Appraisal of the retention of the knowledge for ophthalmology specialists of the Brazilian Ophthalmology Council.
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PURPOSE: To determine the retention of knowledge along the years after certification of physicians as ophthalmology specialists. METHODS: The physicians, former ophthalmology residents, were selected at the Department of Ophthalmology, State University of Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil, and randomly allocated to three groups of seven individuals, according to the time as specialists. Group 1 consisted of one-year specialists, group 2 of five-year specialists and group 3 of ten-year specialists. Each participant answered a test with twenty-five multiple choice randomly selected questions, based on the national certificate tests applied by the Brazilian Ophthalmology Council between 1994 and 2003. Each question scored four points. RESULTS: The mean age of groups 1, 2 and 3 was 27, 30 and 36 years, respectively. A preponderance of males was found in all groups. Group 1 achieved the highest score, average of 88, group 2 achieved 77, and group 3 achieved the lowest, average of 64 (p<0.05). CONCLUSION: Loss of knowledge retention amongst specialists of the Brazilian Ophthalmology Council, has been observed along the years after the certification. (+info)
Dental Admission Test scores and performance on NBDE Part I, revisited.
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The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between performance on the Dental Admission Test (DAT) and Part I of the National Board Dental Examination (NBDE Part I) for students at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM). This study was a retrospective cohort study, examining HSDM students over an eight-year period. Data regarding DAT and NBDE Part I scores were obtained from the Office of the Registrar. Descriptive statistics were computed for all study variables. Multiple linear regression analyses were subsequently computed to examine the relationship between DAT subtest scores and performance on NBDE Part I subtests. Goodness of fit for the models was evaluated using the R-squared value. Statistically significant associations were those with p-value =0.05. Data were available for 244 students who matriculated at HSDM during the period of 1995-2002. DAT reading comprehension scores were statistically significantly associated with performance on all four subsections of the NBDE Part I. DAT general and organic chemistry scores were associated with performance on the microbiology and pathology subtest of NBDE Part I. Performance on the perceptual ability test was associated with performance on the dental anatomy and occlusion subtest. Performance on the DAT reading comprehension subtest was the most reliable predictor of performance on the NBDE Part I. However, the variability in NBDE Part I scores is not accounted for significantly by variability in DAT scores. (+info)
The use of standardized patients for mock oral board exams in neurology: a pilot study.
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BACKGROUND: Mock oral board exams, fashioned after the live patient hour of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology exam, are commonly part of resident assessment during residency training. Exams using real patients selected from clinics or hospitals are not standardized and do not allow comparisons of resident performance across the residency program. We sought to create a standardized patient mock oral board exam that would allow comparison of residents' clinical performance. METHODS: Three cases were created and then used for this mock oral boards exercise utilizing trained standardized patients. Residents from the University of Cincinnati and Indiana University participated in the exam. Residents were scored by attending physician examiners who directly observed the encounter with the standardized patient. The standardized patient also assessed each resident. A post-test survey was administered to ascertain participant's satisfaction with the examination process. RESULTS: Resident scores were grouped within one standard deviation of the mean, with the exception of one resident who was also subjectively felt to "fail" the exam. In exams with two faculty "evaluators", scores were highly correlated. The survey showed satisfaction with the examination process in general. CONCLUSION: Standardized patients can be used for mock oral boards in the live patient format. Our initial experience with this examination process was positive. Further testing is needed to determine if this examination format is more reliable and valid than traditional methods of assessing resident competency. (+info)