Relationship between peer assessment during medical school, dean's letter rankings, and ratings by internship directors.

Full Abstract

BACKGROUND:
It is not known to what extent the dean's letter (medical student performance evaluation [MSPE]) reflects peer-assessed work habits (WH) skills and/or interpersonal attributes (IA) of students.

OBJECTIVE:
To compare peer ratings of WH and IA of second- and third-year medical students with later MSPE rankings and ratings by internship program directors.

DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS:
Participants were 281 medical students from the classes of 2004, 2005, and 2006 at a private medical school in the northeastern United States, who had participated in peer assessment exercises in the second and third years of medical school. For students from the class of 2004, we also compared peer assessment data against later evaluations obtained from internship program directors.

RESULTS:
Peer-assessed WH were predictive of later MSPE groups in both the second (F = 44.90, P < .001) and third years (F = 29.54, P < .001) of medical school. Interpersonal attributes were not related to MSPE rankings in either year. MSPE rankings for a majority of students were predictable from peer-assessed WH scores. Internship directors' ratings were significantly related to second- and third-year peer-assessed WH scores (r = .32 [P = .15] and r = .43 [P = .004]), respectively, but not to peer-assessed IA.

CONCLUSIONS:
Peer assessment of WH, as early as the second year of medical school, can predict later MSPE rankings and internship performance. Although peer-assessed IA can be measured reliably, they are unrelated to either outcome.

Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills

Author information

Author/s: Lurie, Stephen J (SJ); Lambert, David R (DR); Nofziger, Anne C (AC); Epstein, Ronald M (RM); Grady-Weliky, Tana A (TA);

Affiliation: Office of Educational Evaluation and Research, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, NY 14624, USA. Stephen_Lurie(-atsign-)urmc.rochester.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Journal of general internal medicine : official journal of the Society for Research and Education in Primary Care Internal Medicine (J Gen Intern Med), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Jan; vol 22 (issue 1) : pp 13-6

Dates: Created 2007/03/12; Completed 2007/05/15; Revised 2008/11/20;

PMID: 17351836, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

These are the highest related articles currently in the database:

See 100+ related articles.