Medical Faculty, Heidelberg University, Im Neuenheimer Feld 110, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany.
Medical Faculty, Göttingen University, Göttingen, Germany.
Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract. 2022 Oct;27(4):933-948. doi: 10.1007/s10459-022-10120-y. Epub 2022 Jul 6.
Prior work experience in a relevant medical profession is an important admission criterion currently used at many German medical schools in addition to cognitive criteria. In other countries, work experience is often considered in later admission stages (e.g., interviews with pre-selected subgroups of applicants). However, evidence for its predictive validity for study success in addition to cognitive admission criteria is currently lacking. We therefore assessed whether completed vocational training in a relevant medical profession can predict study performance in the first two years of study in addition to cognitive admission criteria. Admission and study performance data of all currently enrolled medical students at two German medical schools (Göttingen and Heidelberg) beginning with the 2013/14 cohort were retrospectively analyzed. Cognitive admission criteria in our sample were GPA grades and a cognitive test ("Test für Medizinische Studiengänge", TMS). We defined the study outcome parameter as the mean percentile rank over all performance data points over the first two years of study for each location, respectively. A multi-level model with varying intercepts by location, GPA, TMS, vocational training, and sex as predictors accounted for 14.5% of the variance in study outcome. A positive predictive association with study outcome was found for vocational training (ß = 0.33, p = .008) beyond GPA (ß = 0.38, p < .001) and TMS (ß = 0.26, p < .001). Our results support the use of prior vocational training as a selection criterion for medical studies potentially adding predictive validity to cognitive criteria.
先前在相关医疗职业中的工作经验是目前许多德国医学院除认知标准外的重要录取标准。在其他国家，工作经验通常在后期的录取阶段考虑（例如，对申请人预先选定的小组进行面试）。然而，目前缺乏其对认知入学标准之外的学习成功的预测有效性的证据。因此，我们评估了在相关医疗专业完成的职业培训是否除认知入学标准外还可以预测前两年的学习成绩。我们回顾性分析了从 2013/14 年开始在两所德国医学院（哥廷根和海德堡）就读的所有目前在册医学生的入学和学习成绩数据。我们样本中的认知入学标准是 GPA 成绩和认知测试（“医学课程测试”，TMS）。我们将研究结果参数定义为每个地点的前两年学习中所有表现数据点的平均百分位排名。位置、平均绩点、TMS、职业培训和性别作为预测因素的多层次模型，解释了学习成绩 14.5%的方差。除了 GPA（β=0.38，p<.001）和 TMS（β=0.26，p<.001）之外，职业培训（β=0.33，p=.008）与学习成绩呈正相关。我们的研究结果支持将先前的职业培训作为医学研究的选择标准，为认知标准增加预测有效性。
