Evaluating the clinical skills of foreign medical school graduates participating in an internship preparation program

In the fall of 1986, the Ministry of Health of the province of Ontario, Canada, implemented a special 36-week internship preparation program for graduates of foreign medical schools. The program accepts 24 candidates per year and is offered at the five Ontario medical schools. At the time of this study, two cohorts of participants had completed the program. As part of the evaluation process, each participant was administered a battery of the same Objective Structured Clinical Examination-type test stations, prior to and on completion of the pre-internship experience. Repeating the same examination permitted investigation of the predictive and construct validities of the clinical skills tests, as well as the stability of the validity and high reliability estimates that emerged from the testing of the first cohort. The results provide convincing evidence of the testing approach's predictive and construct validity and reliability.