Exploring UK medical school differences: the MedDifs study of selection, teaching, student and F1 perceptions, postgraduate outcomes and fitness to practise

Abstract

Background: Medical schools differ, particularly in their teaching, but it is unclear whether such differences matter, although influential claims are often made. The Medical School Differences (MedDifs) study brings together a wide range of measures of UK medical schools, including postgraduate performance, fitness to practise issues, specialty choice, preparedness, satisfaction, teaching styles, entry criteria and institutional factors. Method: Aggregated data were collected for 50 measures across 29 UK medical schools. Data include institutional history (e.g. rate of production of hospital and GP specialists in the past), curricular influences (e.g.

The Analysis of Teaching of Medical Schools (AToMS) survey: an analysis of 47,258 timetabled teaching events in 25 UK medical schools relating to timing, duration, teaching formats, teaching content, and problem-based learning

“…Armed with measures derived from these curriculum maps, we can produce an empirical taxonomy of differences between medical schools in their teaching. The MedDifs companion paper [1] then goes on to analyse how differences in content and format of teaching relate to differences in medical school outcomes, including performance in postgraduate examinations, and whether doctors choose to enter general practice or psychiatry.…”

“…The present study used the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FoI) to obtain sets of timetables from medical schools. 1 However, timetables themselves are not always readily interpretable to outsiders, requiring local information from those within the medical schools to unpack them properly. The lead researchers therefore recruited students from different years in the various medical schools to classify and code each of the individual timetabled events within medical schools, using the timetables as a basis.…”

“…The present study has the advantage of being able to compare the details of teaching within the single national system of the UK, of which ten schools out of the 25 studied here can broadly be labelled as PBL in approach. The companion study, MedDifs, also compares PBL and non-PBL schools in relation to measures of entry qualifications, processes within courses, student perceptions, and postgraduate outcome measures [1]. As such, it might provide the requested 'rigorous comparison of the doctors produced by new [i.e.…”

“…More details of all schools can be found in the World Directory of Medical Schools [45]. 1 The Freedom of Information Act was used because in a previous study [38], despite medical schools having voluntarily provided information on assessment, after publication, we had extended problems due to an anonymous medical school suggesting to the editor that we did not have permission to reproduce material and that some details were incorrect. The journal in which that paper was published offered a right of reply to the medical school, but no subsequent submission has ever been received by the journal.…”

“…In this paper, we report the findings of the AToMs study which provides empirical answers to the questions of what teaching actually occurs in UK medical schools and how schools differ in their teaching. In a companion paper reporting the Med-Difs study [1], we describe how differences in teaching format and content relate to a range of different outcome measures. These measures include performance and perceptions during the medical course and afterwards in clinical practice, and how they relate to input measures such as curricular differences, selection processes, and institutional histories.…”