Examining the approach to medical remediation programmes-an observational study

Remediation of underperforming students is recognised as an important tool in medical education; however, there is no universally agreed approach.

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a remediation program for final year medical students who failed their first long case assessment (LCA1) and to compare their academic performance with their peers who passed their first long case assessment.

The study consisted of two phases. Phase 1 analysed the demographics and academic performance data for the 9% of the class in the remediation group. Phase 2 focused on collecting similar data for the remaining 91% of students in the non-remediation group. Statistical analyses including the Wilcoxon rank sum test and Pearson correlation coefficients were used to compare the groups.

Phase 1 showed 88% of students who participated in remediation successfully passed the second long case assessment (LCA2); however, 25% of this cohort ultimately failed the academic year due to poor results in other assessments. Phase 2 results revealed that non-remediation group students scored significantly higher in LCA2 (59.71% vs 52.07%, p < 0.001) compared to their remediation counterparts, despite 19% of them failing this assessment. Non-remediation group students consistently outperformed their remediation group counterparts in formative and summative assessments. Overall, 6.25% of the entire class failed the academic year.

This study demonstrates the need to focus on overall academic performance to identify struggling students rather than one high stakes exam. Most of the students in the remediation programme ultimately passed LCA2.