Discrepancy Between the 2007 Korean Medical Licensing Examination and the 2006 Learning Objectives for Medical Students / 한국의학교육

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The purpose of this research was to evaluate the relationship between the 2007 Korean medical licensing examination (KMLE) and the 2006 Learning Objectives for Medical Students (LOMC) produced by the Association of Korean Medical Colleges' Council of Deans. METHODS: A total of 493 questions from the 2007 KMLE and the 2006 LOMC were used. The percentage and the frequency of each LOMC used in the 2007 KMLE were analyzed. The possibility of answering questions guided by the LOMC was analyzed. When questions could not be answered using the LOMC, we further categorized these questions into areas of medicine and specific causes. RESULTS: A total of 669 (14.03%) learning objectives were used to solve questions from the 2007 KMLE. A learning objective was used a maximum of 5 times in the 2007 KMLE, and the percentages of one time, 2 times, 3 times, 4 times, and 5 times were 84.90%, 12.11%, 2.39%, 0.45%, and 0.15%, respectively. Four hundred six of 493 questions were solvable using the learning objectives, and 87 (17.65%) were not. When several steps were needed to solve a question, 15 questions (17.24%) could not be solved due to a lack of learning objectives for some of those steps. Overall, the 87 unsolvable questions were from internal medicine (37.9%), obstetrics & gynecology (14.9%), medical law (12.6%), pediatrics (10.3%), general surgery (9.2%), psychiatry (6.9%), and preventive medicine (1.1%). Questions difficult to solve specifically due to absent learning objectives were in the areas of treatment and procedure (29.67%), test and diagnosis (13.19%), symptoms (9.89%), pathophysiology (7.69%), complications (6.59%), and disease entity (6.59%). CONCLUSION: Discrepancy was observed between the 2007 KMLE and the 2006 LOMC. To solve this problem, the reorganization of both the KMLE and the LOMC based on a clear consensus of a primary care physician's role is believed to be needed.