Correlation between housestaff performance on the United States Medical Licensing Examination and standardized patient encounters.

Abstract

The low correlation between the USMLE and performance on a structured clinical exam suggests that either the written exam is a poor predictor of actual clinical performance, the small window of clinical skills measured by the structured clinical exam is inadequate, or the two methods evaluate different skill sets entirely. Our findings are consistent with previous work finding low correlations between structured clinical exams and accepted common means of evaluation, such as faculty evaluations, other written exams and program director assessments. The medical education community needs to develop an objective, valid method of measuring important, yet subjective, skill-sets such as interpersonal communication, empathy and efficient data collection.