Medical student performance on an adolescent medicine examination.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: To examine the performance of third-year medical students on an adolescent medicine clinical practice examination. METHODS: The participants were third-year medical students (2010 [n = 145] and 2011 [n = 134]) at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Student performance on adolescent contraceptive management was measured in three domains following Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) competencies in professionalism, communication, and history-taking skills. RESULTS: With regard to professionalism and communication skills, students performed very well, scoring >95% correct in both years. Students demonstrated relatively poorer performance in history-taking competency in 2010 and 2011 (66% and 67% correct, respectively). CONCLUSION: In the adolescent Objective Structured Clinical Examination case, third-year medical students demonstrated extremely high performance in communication and professionalism skills. However, performance was lower for history-taking skill in contraceptive management.