Osteopathic Medical Student Learning Competency

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this paper is to report on the development and implementation of a learning competency assessment survey for first-year medical students. We began by defining learning competencies in a manner that is parallel to the clinical competencies resulting in a self-assessment survey of 1,998 first-year osteopathic medical students from 25 osteopathic medical schools. Results from the online survey indicated that the internal structure of the instrument and the reliability of the items were strong. The survey revealed that first-year medical students were most confident in their ability to perform in a professional manner and least confident in their ability to manage their curriculum, particularly with the assistance of faculty and advisors. A regression analysis indicated that the best predictors of curricular involvement were Student Learning and Improvement, Knowledge of Osteopathic Philosophy and Skills, Interpersonal Communication, and Systems Knowledge. However, Medical Knowledge and Professionalism did not provide any unique variance to the model, suggesting that students' confidence in their undergraduate science training or self perceptions of their professionalism had little to do with their confidence in navigating medical school.