Elizabeth Ulrich Pridvi Kandagatla Christopher Steffes Lindsay Petersen
Henry Ford Health System
05-01-2019
Purpose: The National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) Surgery Shelf Exam is often criticized as not accurately reflecting surgical knowledge. As a result, medical schools implement an oral exam to b..
Purpose: The National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) Surgery Shelf Exam is often criticized as not accurately reflecting surgical knowledge. As a result, medical schools implement an oral exam to better assess students’ surgical knowledge. There is no data on the correlation between performance on the shelf and oral exams. We sought to assess the utility of the oral exam as a correlate and predictor of shelf exam performance.Methods:We reviewed medical student surgery clerkship performance reports between 2012 through 2018. Students’ clinical evaluation, clinical site, clerkship dates, and exam scores were noted. Bivariate and multivariate analysis was performed to assess for the relationship between the two exams.Results:We reviewed 1,160 performance reports over four clinical sites. The average oral exam score was 20.0 [4.8]. Students with a higher clinical evaluation had a significantly higher oral exam score (21.1 [4.5] vs 19.5 [4.8], p