Pre-admission criteria and pre-clinical achievement: Can they predict medical students performance in the clinical phase?

Abstract

Rational: Various factors affect medical students’ performance during clinical phase. Identifying these factors would help in mentoring weak students and help in selection process for residency programmes.

Objective: Our study objective is to evaluate the impact of pre-admission criteria, and pre-clinical grade point average (GPA) on undergraduate medical students’ performance during clinical phase.

Method: This study has a cross-sectional design that includes fifth- and sixth-year female medical students (71). Data of clinical and pre-clinical GPA in medical school and pre-admission to medical school tests scores were collected.

Results: A significant correlation between clinical GPA with the pre-clinical GPA was observed (p < 0.05). Such significant correlation was not seen with other variables under study. A regression analysis was performed, and the only significant predictor of students clinical performance was the pre-clinical GPA (p < 0.001). However, no significant difference between students’ clinical and pre-clinical GPA for both cohorts was observed (p > 0.05).

Conclusion: Pre-clinical GPA is strongly correlated with and can predict medical students’ performance during clinical years. Our study highlighted the importance of evaluating the academic performances of students in pre-clinical years before they move into clinical years in order to identify weak students to mentor them and monitor their progress.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Department of Registration Affairs for their help and support in collecting students’ grades. Thanks are also extended to Mrs. Nouf Al-Wabel for her secretarial assistance.

Declaration of interest: This work was supported by a research grant from the Faculty of Medicine at Faculty of Medicine, King Fahad Medical City, King Saudi bin AbdulAziz University for Health Sciences (Grant No. 7/33/3). The authors report no conflict of interest.

The publication of this supplement has been made possible with the generous financial support of the Dr Hamza Alkholi Chair for Developing Medical Education in KSA.