Evaluation of students' learning in an interdisciplinary medicine- surgery clerkship

Purpose. To evaluate the impact of an interdisciplinary medicine- surgery clerkship (created to foster generalist education) on students' performances on National Board of Medical Examiners' (NBME) subject examinations. Method. Test data for the 226 students who participated in the 16-week combined clerkship and for the 265 students who had completed the traditional clerkships (12 weeks of medicine, 12 weeks of surgery) were complied and analyzed using t-tests for independent samples. Results. Mean scores on the NBME subject examination in medicine increased after the combined medicine-surgery clerkship (from 433 to 455, p ≤ 0.5). Mean scores on the NBME subject examination in the surgery were similar to those achieved in the traditional clerkship years. Conclusion. Since the medicine and surgery clerkships were combined into a single, interdisciplinary clerkship, students' scores have increased on the medicine NBME subject examination and have remained relatively unchanged on the surgery NBME subject examination, despite a substantial reduction in students' clinical experience in the combined clerkship from the traditional clerkships (16 vs 24 weeks).