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Surgery clerkship shelf performance: evaluating the impact of required didactic hours on exam scores

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Global Surgical Education - Journal of the Association for Surgical Education Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

During the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual and alternative teaching strategies were developed with subsequent changes in the number of required didactic hours. However, the exact relationship between number of didactic hours and performance on the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) Subject Exams is not clear. This study aims to evaluate the impact of reduced didactic hours on medical student NBME performance during the third-year surgery clerkship.

Methods

This retrospective study evaluated the first-time pass rates and mean scores on the NBME exam for medical students who participated in an eight-week surgery clerkship at a single institution between 2017 and 2022. Didactic schedules, including hours of synchronous and asynchronous content, and de-identified scores were obtained. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test, chi-squared test, linear regression, and logistic regression were used to assess for differences in scores and pass rates as a function of didactic hours.

Results

The cohort included 964 students. The mean NBME score was 72.23 and differed significantly across didactic hours (p < 0.001). Compared to students who received 15 didactic hours, those who received 25.5, 33, and 37 h had 2.93 (p = 0.01), 3.44 (p = 0.004), and 2.41 (p = 0.049) times odds of failing, respectively.

Conclusions

Increased didactic hours during surgery clerkships was not associated with higher NBME scores or first-time pass rates. Reducing didactic hours may improve exam performance and allow students more independent study time while decreasing faculty burden. Future research should seek to understand how reduced hours impacts students’ subjective experience and well-being.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

Statistical support was expertly provided by the Biostatistics Core which is funded by the UCSF Department of Surgery. J. Wang was supported by the UCSF Noyce Initiative for Digital Transformation in Computational Biology & Health, Computational Innovator Postdoctoral Fellowship Award.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Medicine, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Hannah El-Sabrout & Katherine Barnes

  2. Department of Surgery, University of California San Francisco, 513 Parnassus Ave. S-321, San Francisco, CA, 94143, USA

    Jessica Gosnell, Matthew Lin & Jaeyun Jane Wang

Authors
  1. Hannah El-Sabrout
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  2. Katherine Barnes
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  3. Jessica Gosnell
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  4. Matthew Lin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jaeyun Jane Wang.

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The authors have no relevant financial relationship(s) or commercial interest(s) that pertain to this study.

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El-Sabrout, H., Barnes, K., Gosnell, J. et al. Surgery clerkship shelf performance: evaluating the impact of required didactic hours on exam scores. Global Surg Educ 2, 97 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44186-023-00174-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s44186-023-00174-w

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