Predictors of professional behaviour and academic outcomes in a UK medical school: A longitudinal cohort study

AbstractBackground: Over the past 70 years, there has been a recurring debate in the literature and in the popular press about how best to select medical students. This implies that we are still not getting it right: either some students are unsuited to medicine or the graduating doctors are considered unsatisfactory, or both.Aim: To determine whether particular variables at the point of selection might distinguish those more likely to become satisfactory professional doctors, by following a complete intake cohort of students throughout medical school and analysing all the data used for the students’ selection, their performance on a range of other potential selection tests, academic and clinical assessments throughout their studies, and records of professional behaviour covering the entire five years of the course.Methods: A longitudinal database captured the following anonymised information for every student (n = 146) admitted in 2007 to the Hull York Medical School (HYMS) in the UK: demographic data (a...