Issue Twenty - March 7, 2003
New USMLE™ Clinical Skills Exam
The sponsoring organizations of the United States Medical Licensing Examination™ (USMLE) plan to incorporate a clinical skills exam into the USMLE. The new exam will assess the clinical and communication skills that are essential to diagnosing and treating patients and communicating with other health care professionals. It will complement the current three Steps of the USMLE, which measure medical knowledge and analytical skills. Implementation of the new exam is planned for mid-2004.
Currently, international medical students and graduates (IMGs) must pass the ECFMG® Clinical Skills Assessment (CSA®) to fulfill the clinical skills requirement for ECFMG Certification. When the ECFMG Board of Trustees meets in April 2003, it will decide whether the clinical skills component of the USMLE, once implemented, will be the exam that IMGs will take to satisfy the clinical skills requirement for ECFMG Certification.
Like the ECFMG CSA, the clinical skills exam will be a one-day exam consisting of encounters with standardized patients, people who have been trained to simulate real patients. Examinees will be required to establish a rapport with the patients, elicit pertinent medical histories, perform focused physical examinations, and answer questions and provide counseling, when appropriate. After each patient encounter, examinees will have ten minutes to record pertinent history and physical examination findings, list diagnostic impressions and outline plans for further evaluation, if necessary. The cases portrayed by the standardized patients will cover common and important situations that physicians are likely to encounter in a general ambulatory clinic.
The clinical skills component of the USMLE will be administered throughout the year at several regional test sites in the United States. The Clinical Skills Assessment Centers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Atlanta, Georgia, where ECFMG currently administers the CSA to IMGs, will serve as test centers for the new exam. Three additional test centers will be established in 2004. IMGs would take the new exam at these regional test centers with graduates of U.S./Canadian medical schools.
Detailed information on the clinical skills component is available on the USMLE website. Additional information will be posted to the USMLE website and the ECFMG website as it becomes available. Applicants for ECFMG Certification and IMGs interested in pursuing ECFMG Certification should monitor the ECFMG and USMLE websites for important updates on the implementation of the clinical skills exam.
Follow up to Issue 19: Final Medical School Transcript
The February 28, 2003 issue of the ECFMG Reporter (Issue 19) contained an article concerning the requirement that graduates submit a final medical school transcript to receive a Standard ECFMG Certificate effective February 1, 2004. ECFMG has received a significant number of inquiries requesting clarification of what a final medical school transcript is.
The final medical school transcript is an official document that is the record of the graduate's medical education, issued by the medical school or university, on or after graduation.
The format of the final medical school transcript may vary among institutions. The final medical school transcript contains the name of the medical school or university and the name of the graduate. Other items that may be contained in the final medical school transcript include, but are not limited to, the dates of attendance, courses taken, credits for each course, grade in each course, summary of transfer credit accepted and the name of the institution from which the credit was accepted, title of the degree awarded, date degree was awarded, program of study (i.e., medicine), and date the transcript was issued.
Graduates should contact their medical school to inquire what document the medical school issues as a final medical school transcript.