The Final Oral/Practical State Examination at Freiburg Medical Faculty in 2012--Analysis of grading to test quality assurance.

Abstract

Aim: The aim of this study is to analyze the grades given for the oral/practical part of the German State Examination at the Medical Faculty of Freiburg. We examined whether or not the grades given for the written and the oral/practical examinations correlated and if differences in grading between the Freiburg University Medical Center (UMC) and the other teaching hospitals could be found. In order to improve the quality of the state examination, the medical school has been offering standardized training for examiners for several years. We evaluated whether or not trained and untrained examiners differed in their grading of the exam and how these differences have changed over time.

Methods: The results of the 2012 spring and fall exams were analyzed (N=315). The relevant data set was made available to us by the Baden-Württemberg Examination Office (Landesprüfungsamt). The data were analyzed by means of descriptive and inferential statistics.

Results: We observed a correlation of ρ=0.460** between the grades for the written and the oral/practical exams. The UMC and the teaching hospitals did not differ significantly in their grade distributions. Compared to untrained examiners, trained ones assigned the grade of "very good" less often. Furthermore, they displayed a significantly higher variance in the grades given (p=0.007, phi=0.165). This effect is stronger when concentrating specifically on those examiners who took part in the training less than a year before.

Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that the standardized training for examiners at the Medical Faculty of Freiburg is effective for quality assurance. As a consequence, more examiners should be motivated to take part in the training.