Predicting Clinical Skills in Graduate Health Sciences Applicants: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Purpose: The primary purpose of this systematic review was to investigate the ability of admission measures to predict clinical skills in graduate students from a variety of health sciences fields. Method: Online databases were searched for research using application measures to make predictions regarding clinical skill development in graduate students in health sciences fields. Twenty-eight studies were included. Articles were analyzed to determine what, if any, admissions measures predicted academic and clinical success in those graduate health care sciences students as well as the generalizability of various authors' findings and consistency of results across the body of research reviewed. Results: Cognitive measures such as undergraduate grade point averages and standardized test scores, including the Graduate Record Examination, more consistently predicted academic outcomes than clinical outcomes in graduate health care students. Noncognitive measures such as essays, interviews, personality tests, and letters of recommendation were slightly better than cognitive measures at predicting clinical skills. Conclusions: Clinical skills are not well defined, leading to difficulty in developing targeted admission and outcome measures. In addition, it was difficult to compare outcomes of the research due to the wide variety of measures used to assess student potential at the time of admission and the wide variety of outcome measures used to assess academic and clinical proficiency.