Reporting of the Medical Licensing Examination —Reply

In Reply Based on the letters from Mr Schneider, Drs Everett and Isea, and Dr Battisti, we find 2 key issues to discuss —transparency and competency. We absolutely agree that increased transparency and access to data, both from medical schools and through ERAS, would facilitate holistic review. Program directors have been lamenting the erosion of meaningful performance measures for years as medical schools increasi ngly moved to pass-fail grading. We wonder what role the narrow focus on academic metrics in residency selection may have played during this transition. Broadening the selection criteria beyond academic metrics in true holistic review may be a more successful approach for encouraging data release th an further demands for score details. Realistic solutions include use of additional information already collected by ERAS, such as student experiences (volunteer work, research productivity) and attributes (language skills, regional ties, distance traveled), to filter applicants for review. Once a r easonable number of applications is identified, each can be individually assessed for mission-specific factors including medical knowledge.
Source: JAMA - Category: General Medicine Source Type: research