Comparative study of academic achievement in clinical phase between the joint medical program (SWU – UoN) and the regular medical program students, Srinakharinwirot university

Abstract

The Faculty of Medicine, Srinakarinwirot University offers two curricular programs for Doctor of Medicine degree. The regular medical program recruits students from admission test regulated by the consortium of Thai medical school, and all the courses were taught at Srinakarinwirot University (SWU), Thailand. The Joint Medical program (SWU-UoN) recruits studentsdirectly from Thai and international high schools and the students’ study three years of biomedical sciences at the University of Nottingham, UK and then return to SWU to complete their medical degree. We compared the academic achievement of 5th- year students of the two programs for the academic year 2013, 2014 and 2015. Outcome variables were students’ five years cumulative grade point average (CGPA) and the National License Examination step 2 (NLE step 2) scores. The NLE step 2 is a paper-based 300 multiple choice questions covering clinical science subjects.The data from a total of 382 students were included in this study. There was no statistically significant difference between the regular program (N = 353) and the joint medical program (N = 29) in terms of students’ CPGA and NLE scores (3.20 versus 3.25, p = 0.53,and 184.6 versus 179.1, p = 0.15 respectively)