Correlations between graduates' performances as first-year residents and their performances as medical students

To correlate graduates' performances as first-year residents with their performances as medical students, particularly their performances as seniors on a clinical skills examination using standardized patients.

Residency directors were asked to rate the first-year performances of the 232 graduates from the classes of 1989-1991 of the Brown University School of Medicine. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated for the relationships between these ratings and the two scores (for data collection and interpersonal skills) that the graduates had received in their senior year on a clinical skills examination using standardized patients. Correlations were also calculated between the residency ratings and the graduates' preclinical and clinical course grades and scores on Parts I and II of the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) examination.

Ratings were returned and complete data were available for 203 (87.5%) of the graduates. Among all the parameters of medical school performance, the data-collection score on the clinical skills examination correlated best (.273) with performance as a first-year resident. The correlations between the residency ratings and scores on the NBME I and II were practically zero.

This comparatively strong correlation between the graduates' data-collection scores and their performance ratings as first-year residents suggests that performance-based assessments using standardized patients may be at least as good as--perhaps even better than--traditional methods of evaluating medical students in predicting their performances as first-year residents.