News bites: Medical education

Personality traits can be tested reliably in applicants to medical school - Psychometric tests seem to be a reliable way of assessing medical school applicants' personality traits and ethical and moral reasoning, as well as their cognitive ability, a study has found. The new test - the personal qualities assessment - was tested in medical schools in the United Kingdom, Australia, Israel, and Fiji. The study showed that cognitive ability did not vary with sex or educational background, although it tended to be lower in applicants from more deprived backgrounds. Applicants from independent and state funded schools had similar psychometric scores. The authors concluded that applicants from deprived backgrounds would not be disadvantaged by an admissions process based on the instrument (Medical Education 2005;39:258-65).

UK Postgraduate medical curriculum launched The operational framework for the new foundation programmes in the United Kingdom has now been launched. The document outlines how the changes in the initial years in postgraduate medical education in the UK will be rolled out. There are clear statements of intention within both the curriculum and the operational framework to shift from assessment being simply a knowledge based exam following time served, to that of measuring a doctor's performance in a variety of settings against the standards set out in GMC's Good Medical Practice (www.mmc.nhs.uk).

CHESS aids medical student learning CHESS (the clinical health economics system simulation), a team based contest designed to teach the principles and practice of health economics, is an effective way of communicating health economics to students. Teams compete with each other to manage healthcare scenarios with limited resources. In a questionnaire evaluation (which had a 94% response rate), 98% of students found the game considerably more stimulating than traditional lectures and small group format teaching for health economics (Academic Medicine 2005;80:129-34).



studentBMJ 2005;13:221-264 June ISSN 0966-6494