High school versus graduate entry in a Saudi medical school - is there any difference in academic performance and professionalism lapses?

Ahmed Rumayyan Al Rumayyan,Tahir Kamal Hameed,Abdulaziz Ahmed Al Zahrani

doi:10.1186/s12909-016-0834-7

Abstract

BackgroundKing Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS) was the first university in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia offering both high school entry and graduate entry (GE) students into medical school. We compared the academic performance and professionalism lapses of high school entry and GE students who undertook the same curriculum and examinations in the College of Medicine, Riyadh, KSAU-HS.MethodsExamination scores of 196 high school graduates and 54 GE students over a 4-year period (2010–2014) were used as a measure of academic achievement. For assessment of professionalism lapses, we compared the number of warning letters in both streams of students.ResultsIn some pre-clinical courses, high school entry students performed significantly better than GE students. There was no significant difference in academic performance of high school entry and GE students in clinical rotations. GE students had a significantly greater number of warning letters per student as compared to high school entry students.DiscussionThis is the first Saudi study to compare the performance of high school entry and GE students in a medical school. Overall, both streams of students performed equally well with high school entry students performing better than GE students in a few pre-clinical courses. We compared professionalism lapses and found an increase in number of warning letters for GE students. More studies are needed to evaluate if there are differences in other assessments of professionalism between these two streams of students.

Highlights

King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS) was the first university in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia offering both high school entry and graduate entry (GE) students into medical school
In the pre-clinical phase, there was no significant difference in the overall percentage grade between high school entry and GE students
There was no significant difference in academic performance for four clinical rotations in which there were 118 and 34 high school entry and GE students, respectively (Table 3)

Summary

Introduction

King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS) was the first university in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia offering both high school entry and graduate entry (GE) students into medical school. A study from the University of Nottingham, UK found that GE students outperformed high school entry students in the initial clinical phase, but had a lower performance on most of the subsequent knowledge-based exams [5]. Another study from the UK reported that on average the academic performance of GE medical students was better than high school entry students [6]. Based on this literature, there is no clear advantage of one group over the other in terms of academic performance. To the best of our knowledge, the academic performance of high school entry and GE students has not been studied in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or in the Gulf region

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