Final Examination

It is no accident that my friends talked about the medical school examination in their blogs recently. The fourth week of April had passed, and the year-end examination is looming large on the horizon.

Mention final examination, and most of us envisage a medical ward flooded with medical students at every corner, making every effort to see – and touch, if lucky enough – their patients. Like it or not, a grizzled man with artificial heart valves becomes a popular Hollywood movie star, and the hospital is virtually awash with his fans.

This is a race final year medical students have wrestled with for years. And it is symptomatic of all the pressures put together, after five years of medical education.

It would seem to be a truism that a medical student must do well in the final examination in order to be a great doctor. However, I believe that reality is not quite clear. The ability to feel a skin-deep spleen in the examination can earn you good marks or even get on the dean's list. So what? The sense of professionalism is never palpable in the examination setting. As it turns out, there is really not much we can correlate with a student's task of being a professional.

Which brings me to the numerous studies performed at Harvard Business School: those studies were designed to figure out which factors are correlated with a student's future achievement. They've looked at courses taken, marks earned, and all manner of other variables, including height. Unfortunately, there seems to be no relationship at all between the grades a student receives, and his or her later degree of accomplishment. Short-term correlations, yes; long-term, none at all.