An Experience of Independent Evaluation of Final MBBS Examinations

I was recently invited by Prof. Rakesh Biswas, to provide a blinded assessment of 33 students who just appeared for their final MBBS examinations at the Department of General Medicine, in Kamineni Institute of Medical Sciences, by assessing their long case, short case and seeing their performance recorded on video. 

This was quite an illuminating experience for me. For the concerns of privacy, I would not share any identifiable personal details. However, I can share my overall impressions.

The Ugly

Plagiarism is a worry. In some of the cases, the students seemed to be totally clueless. Apparently they hardly attended any clinics. Or were the clinics too pedantic and boring?

The Bad

Currently the MBBS curriculum is ignoring a fact that medical knowledge is doubling in about 70 days. It is just not possible for anyone to remember everything that is up to date. Nevertheless, the basics remain the same. 

While modern technological advancements do provide us greater insights, it also makes us helpless where none of those are available and only clinical acumen can help. Clinical acumen cannot be built in a day, but sincere repeated efforts are necessary. In the process of getting used to MCQs, the obvious signs often bypass us. Moreover the eye does not see what the mind does not know and none so blind as will not see. These are not useless adages but rather axiomatic.

Making a list of Provisional Diagnosis judiciously requires skills of health informatics, especially health data literacy. Those are beyond the scope of the NMC prescribed essential curriculum.

The Good

In general, most of the students were methodical in history taking and recording them properly. As expected, some of the students appeared as sincere learners.

 

 

 

All in all, it was a privilege and honor to have got the opportunity to have re-evaluated the students, though remotely. In essence, it appeared that the medical curriculum, especially the learning methodologies needs a thorough revamping. The obvious question now is whether AI will replace doctors? The answer is simple. Doctors not using AI will be inevitably replaced by doctors using AI because Brain plus Computer is always greater than either alone.