Clinical assessment performance of graduate- and undergraduate-entry medical students

Background: Recent evidence suggests that graduate-entry medical students may have a marginal academic performance advantage over undergraduate entrants in a pre-clinical curriculum in both bioscience knowledge and clinical skills assessments. It is unclear whether this advantage is maintained in the clinical phase of medical training. Aim: The study aimed to compare graduate and undergraduate entrants undertaking an identical clinical curriculum on assessments undertaken during clinical training in the medical course. Methods: Clinical assessment results for four cohorts of medical students (n=713) were compared at the beginning and at the end of clinical training for graduate and undergraduate entrants. Results: Results showed that graduate-and undergraduate-entry medical students performed similarly on clinical assessments. Female students performed consistently better than male students. Conclusion: The findings of this study suggest that any academic performance advantage held by graduate-entry medical students is limited to the early years of the medical course, and is not evident during clinical training in the later years of the course.