Criteria for Selection of Future Physicians

Abstract

Academic achievement correlates poorly with clinical performance of physicians, so it is probably more important to select college students for medical school admission who will be superior physicians than to select those who will be excellent medical students. Before such selection criteria can be developed, a valid description of a superior physician must be determined. The relative importance of 87 characteristics of a superior physician, based on a previously published list, was determined by asking medical school faculty members to rate them. The resulting description of a superior physician is valid, because it correlated very highly (r = 0.87, p less than 0.001) with the published ratings of the same characteristics from decades earlier in another part of the country, and because it was constant across many subgroups. The faculty was also asked to rate how easily each characteristic could be taught, and those ratings were validated by high correlations across several subgroups. The importance and the teachability ratings were combined into a nonteachable-important index (NTII) that provides a rank order of traits that are important but cannot be taught easily. These are the characteristics that should be used in selecting future physicians.

Teaching Empathy through Movies: Reaching Learners’ Affective Domain in Medical Education

“…A classic study published twenty five year ago comes to mind (Sade, Stroud, Levine & Fleming, 1985). This study was mainly designed to help medical school admission committees to better select college students for medical school.…”

Medical School Application Interview Score Has Limited Predictive Validity for Performance on a Fourth Year Clinical Practice Examination

“…Each interview lasts a minimum of 30 min, with up to 1 h allotted should the interviewer require the time. The College of Medicine employs a scoring rubric developed and validated by a previous Associate Dean for Admissions at the study institution, assessing how well the applicant fits the profile of the ''Ideal Physician'' developed by Price and co-authors (Price et al, 1971;Sade et al, 1985). In addition to assessing interpersonal skills, interviewers are asked to evaluate applicants in several broad categories, including principles (e.g.…”

Selecting medical students

“…Inevitably, the more extensive the consultation with interested parties, e.g., around the medical school, hospital and community, the more extensive the list generated, until it becomes increasingly evident that there could be few potential students who possess all these putatively vital desirable qualities. In the USA, for example, Price et al (1971) consulted widely and produced a list of 87 positive qualities that should be present in a doctor and 29 negative qualities that should be absent (see also Sade et al 1985).…”