The Step 1 Score Reporting Change – A Step in the Right Direction for IMGs?
By TALAL HILAL, MD
The United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step
1, a test co-sponsored by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) and the
National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), has been the exam that people love
to hate. For many years, blogs, Twitter feeds, and opinion pieces have been
accumulating urging the presidents of the FSMB/NBME to stop reporting a 3-digit
score and instead report a pass/fail score. This animosity towards the Step 1
exam originates from the reality that medical schools have increasingly focused
their curriculum on teaching what the Step 1 wants you to learn – medical
trivia that almost always has no bearing on how to approach a clinical problem.
This “Step 1 Madness” is unhealthy. The reasons for its
existence are many: residency and fellowship programs allow it to exist by
idolizing higher scores, some believe it is a metric that can predict future
quality of care, board pass rates, etc. And some are naïve enough to think that
what is tested on the Step 1 is actually useful medical knowledge! It may be
due to a combination of the above that the Step 1 has found itself in such a
peculiar spot. However, the emphasis on the Step 1 score means that medical
students’ fate is being determined by a single test. Nobody wants their fate to
be so unmalleable.
Those who were writing vehemently against a 3-digit score rejoiced when the FSMB/NBME announced on February 12 that the Step 1 will finally become a pass/fa...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Medical Education Medical Practice Physicians FSMB IMGs international medical graduates Match NBME Residency Step 1 Step 1 Madness Talal Hilal USMLE USMLE Step 1 Source Type: blogs
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