Selecting medical students

Editor—Parry et al's comprehensive summary of admissions processes in English medical schools closes with a gloomy picture of the current state of UK medical student selection.¹

There is, in fact, much going on. For example, one medical school has run trials of a personal qualities assessment procedure (PQA) for selecting medical students. In addition, Lumsden et al, whom Parry et al cite in the long version of their paper, centred on the experimental use of PQA in applicants to all of the Scottish medical schools.² The aim was to gather the scores of prospective medical students, not to inform selection decisions but to form the predictor variables against which to compare the later performance in medical school and ultimately professional progress.

PQA is a portfolio of psychometric tests that we have designed to measure some of the qualities that the literature and many surveys have indicated should be looked for in applicants to medical school. We developed this fresh approach to student selection after extensive consultation with stakeholders. Since 1997 the test has been administered to more than 20 000 people in a health professional context. The reliability of the component instruments has been carefully monitored and documented, and details of their construct validity (does it measure what it purports to measure?) have been published in the international peerreviewed literature (see www.pqa.net.au for references).

Figure 1.

Credit: MAXIMILLIAN STOCK/SPL

Currently we are collaborating with medical schools in England, Scotland, Sweden, Australia, and Canada to evaluate the long term predictive validity of the test. Thus, much of what Parry et al call for is being done by the PQA research team in collaboration with medical schools.