Intended for healthcare professionals

Rapid response to:

Research

Admissions processes for five year medical courses at English schools: review

BMJ 2006; 332 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.38768.590174.55 (Published 27 April 2006) Cite this as: BMJ 2006;332:1005

Rapid Response:

Evidence-Based Admissions Procedures for Medical Students

It is useful to have a comprehensive summary of the ways in which UK
medical schools admit students to their five-year courses, but it is
disappointing that the authors of the review in their closing paragraphs,
and in the ‘what this study adds’ section, paint such a gloomy picture of
the current state of UK medical student selection. There is, in fact,
much going on. For example, the authors of the review themselves mention,
but only in passing, that one medical school has trialled a ‘personal
qualities assessment’ procedure (PQA) in the context of medical student
selection but they don’t indicate the results of that trial, which would
have been informative. Interestingly the authors have referenced in their
introduction a relevant study by Lumsden and colleagues but they failed to
mention that this study was centred on the experimental use of PQA with
applicants to all of the Scottish medical schools. The aim of that study
was to gather the scores of prospective medical students, not to inform
selection decisions, but to form the predictor variables against which to
compare the later performance in medical school, and ultimately
professional progress. The Lumsden paper in its conclusion mentions this
long term objective, acknowledgement of which should have cast a somewhat
different light on the review authors’ closing remarks.

We declare an interest in this subject as the developers of the
selection procedure in question. PQA is a portfolio of psychometric tests
designed to measure some of the qualities that the literature and many
surveys have indicated we should be looking for in applicants to medical
school. This fresh approach to student selection has been developed
following extensive consultation with stakeholders as to what we should be
seeking in prospective medical students. Since 1997 the test has been
administered to more than 20,000 individuals in a health professional
context. The reliability of the component instruments has been carefully
monitored and documented, and details of their construct validity (does it
measure what it purports to measure?) has been published in the
international peer-reviewed literature (see www.pqa.net.au for
references). Currently we have on-going research collaborations with
medical schools in England, Scotland, Sweden, Australia and Canada to
evaluate the long term predictive validity of the test. Thus, much of
what the authors of the current paper call for is actually being done by
the PQA research team in collaboration with medical schools.

Lumsden MA, Bore M, Millar K, Jack R, Powis D. Assessment of
personal qualities in relation to admission to medical school. Medical
Education 2005, 59, 258-265

Competing interests:
We are the developers of the Personal Qualities Assessment known as PQA

Competing interests: No competing interests

22 March 2006
David A Powis
Conjoint Professor, University of Newcastle
Miles Bore and Donald Munro
University of Newcastle, 2308