Serving as an Anatomy Laboratory Teaching Assistant was not Associated with Higher Scores on the USMLE Step 1 Exam

Abstract

Introduction & Objective Anatomy is the foundation of clinical practice. Serving as a near-peer teaching assistant (TA) is believed to reinforce previously acquired anatomic knowledge. Performance in medical gross anatomy has been shown to correlate with performance on licensure exams. Of the many studies that have described factors associated with USMLE Step 1 scores, none could be located that examined the influence of experience as an anatomy TA. The objective of this study was to test if medical students that served as anatomy TAs performed better than their peers on the USMLE Step 1 exam. Materials & Methods Overall Step 1 exam scores were obtained and deidentified for medical students that served as TAs for the gross anatomy laboratory component of the physical therapy program anatomy course. An unpaired t-test was used to compare those scores (dependent variable) with a control group of medical students that did not serve as TAs (independent variable), yet were in the same cohort and whose medical gross anatomy course grades were within one standard deviation of the experimental group. Results Scores were obtained for TAs (n = 60) that served in courses from 2011 to 2017 and compared with students that did not serve as a TA (n = 60). Mean USMLE Step 1 scores (± standard deviation) for the experimental group (237.967 ±19.698) were similar to the control group (236.067 ± 16.508; P = 0.568). Conclusion Serving as a TA in a gross anatomy laboratory course was unrelated to performance on Step 1 of the medical licensure exam. Significance & Implication Many gross anatomy laboratory courses include instruction from near-peer teaching assistants. These results suggest that serving as an anatomy lab TA is unrelated to performance on the USMLE Step 1 exam.