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Journal of Medical Education

Abstract

Examinations and tests have traditionally been the primary if not the sole yardstick in measuring student performance in educational institutes ranging from elementary schools to universities. Medical schools in the Asian-Pacific region are no exception to this. In fact, it may not be an over-exaggeration to state that examinations, to some students, can seemingly be a matter of life and death. The author illustrates the commonly perceived flaws of conventional examinations through the telling of a true story of Doris, a medical student in Hong Kong, victimized by the competitiveness of conventional examinations, If not for the author's early detection of her problem and timely intervention through constant feedback and caring assistance, Doris, pressured by her parents' high expectations, heart-broken by her teachers' indifference, and depressed by alienation from her peers, would have killed herself after repeatedly failing her examinations. Based on the author's personal experience with premed, students in the US, the author pictures examinations and tests on one hand as assessing only a limited competency of students' learning ability, and on the other, as possibly fostering the creation of unhealthy competitiveness in students' learning attitudes and exerting powerful negative influences on students' moral and social behavior. Excessive and improperly designed examinations not only distort the students' motivation and attitudes for learning, but their reliability and validity in assessing students' learning ability and capacity are also questionable. It may be inappropriate to view the methodology of assessment as being good or bad; it is really a matter of its compatibility with the curriculum in relation to what kind of future doctors we want to produce. If we expect tomorrow's doctors to be life-long learners, cooperative team-players, effective communicators, and proactive problem-solvers with compassion and proper professionalism, do the examinations as dictated by our current conventional medical curriculum help our present medical students achieve these aspects of competency?

First Page

436

Last Page

442

DOI

10.6145/jme.200012_4(4).0003

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