The Revised Medical School Performance Evaluation: Does It Meet the Needs of Its Readers?

Abstract

Background The Medical School Performance Evaluation (MSPE) is an important factor for application to residency programs. Many medical schools are incorporating recent recommendations from the Association of American Medical Colleges MSPE Task Force into their letters. To date, there has been no feedback from the graduate medical education community on the impact of this effort. Objective We surveyed individuals involved in residency candidate selection for internal medicine programs to understand their perceptions on the new MSPE format. Methods A survey was distributed in March and April 2018 using the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine listserv, which comprises 4220 individuals from 439 residency programs. Responses were analyzed, and themes were extracted from open-ended questions. Results A total of 140 individuals, predominantly program directors and associate program directors, from across the United States completed the survey. Most were aware of the existence of the MSPE Task Force. Respondents read a median of 200 to 299 letters each recruitment season. The majority reported observing evidence of adoption of the new format in more than one quarter of all medical schools. Among respondents, nearly half reported the new format made the MSPE more important in decision-making about a candidate. Within the MSPE, respondents recognized the following areas as most influential: academic progress, summary paragraph, graphic representation of class performance, academic history, and overall adjective of performance indicator (rank). Conclusions The internal medicine graduate medical education community finds value in many components of the new MSPE format, while recognizing there are further opportunities for improvement.

Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE) 2017 Task Force Recommendations as Reflected in the Format of 2018 MSPE

“…A recent survey of program directors appeared to show support for continuing the process of standardizing the MSPE. 3 Many issues for continuing discussions by the medical education community remain. These include the lack of consensus regarding how schools define professionalism.…”

Review of the Medical Student Performance Evaluation: analysis of the end-users’ perspective across the specialties

“…As a tool of communication between UME and GME, an important consideration for the MSPE is the perspective of the end-user, defined as a person who uses the document in the residency selection process. In 2019, we reported on a survey of MSPE end-users in Internal Medicine (IM) [ 13 ]. Those findings indicated that the MSPE provided valuable information to end-users in their applicant selection process.…”

Curated collection for clinician educators: Six key papers on residency recruitment

“…If a program has a low first‐pass success rate on specialty board qualifying examinations, these factors may be important to consider. The Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), interestingly, did not show convincing evidence that it could reliably predict future cognitive or noncognitive performance in residents despite being designed as a standardized comprehensive evaluation, although new guidelines for these letters are now being implemented at medical schools 33 . Negative and equivocal faculty comments on clerkship evaluations were associated with professionalism issues during residency.…”