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Faculty Development National Board of Medical Examiners. Tuesday 4/20/10. Overview. Board Performance declining at 0.08 Standard Deviations per year for last 4 years Rarely do our students score at the national average or above
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Faculty DevelopmentNational Board of Medical Examiners Tuesday 4/20/10
Overview • Board Performance declining at 0.08 Standard Deviations per year for last 4 years • Rarely do our students score at the national average or above • 70% of our students failed the practice Board Examination that they took this year
Some Observations • Our students never reach the national average in many Disciplines/areas • Genetics is the worst performing area in the 10 year average but did considerably better in 2009 than many other areas • I still want to target Genetics because I feel it is an emerging area that will have greater impact with time
Additional Observations • Biochemistry appears to be a weakness of our students • I’d like to target this area for intervention • Biostats is a consistent area of weakness but is sparsely represented on the Boards • Don’t feel this is worth addressing
More Observations • Principles, Histology and Hematopoiesis are the next weakest areas • All of the disciplines except Biochem & Anatomy perform essentially identically
More Observations • Anatomy clearly is doing something correct • Maybe the rest of us can learn something from them- formative quizzes, clinical vignettes • Musculoskeletal is doing something correct, although recent trend is in the wrong direction • Respiratory, GI & CV performing fairly well • Lois Heller is Course director of GI & CV and students seem to be improving on their performance • This is bucking the downward trend
More • The MCATs don’t seem to correlate with Board Performance • 4th highest MCAT’s last year to go with 2nd lowest Board Performance • In contrast, higher MCAT scores in earlier years (2003-2005) did go with highest Board performance
More • Curricular hours do not necessarily result in higher Board Scores • Look at Anatomy in 1999-2001 • Had large numbers of hours without good performance on Boards • Other disciplines with large numbers of hours do not perform well on boards
Potential Solutions • Add cases to our 7 week blocks to emphasize major points • Recommend 1 genetics case for each block • Recommend that the case not be lecture • Preferably a case-based format where students are required to learn actively • I like PBL but do not believe we have the buy-in of faculty/leadership to do that • Could use formatting requiring students to “solve” a case in a sequential pattern getting additional information when completing an assigned task
Potential Solutions • Also like to add a Biochemistry case to each block • Assess whether these additions benefit student performance • Two year lag time between implementation and analysis • If a benefit is realized, I would recommend that we include cases in other disciplines/areas
Potential Solutions • Let’s look at expectations of the Board of Examiners • They have a list of Areas and their relative weight on the Boards • They also have sample questions • Please look at the attachment from NBME to evaluate the questions and expectations • Need to write better questions
Some Additional querries • Why the better performance 2003-2005 • What are the following for the best & worst: • Objectives • Syllabus • Teaching methods • Instruction • Teaching philosophy
Some Additional querries • Relationship between hours and performance • Relationship between time in school year & board performance • Grades in School vs Grades on Boards
Some Additional querries • Has our educational delivery methods kept up with our students? • Should we have board prep available on-line all the time?
Potential Solutions • Additional suggestions: • One faculty member felt that Board scores would be higher if MCATs were higher • Discipline questions are too diluted in our curriculum • Faculty loss is taking a toll (especially in Pathology) • Clinical Chemistry is not adequately represented • Excitement about e-learning is misplaced • Future will be worse
Potential Solutions • Additional suggestions: • One faculty member is excited about the potential for multiple regression analysis to decipher what’s going on