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DISCUSSION OF STEP 2 CS CASE CONTENT IS IRREGULAR BEHAVIOR
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10.25.04 (4 years ago)
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DISCUSSION OF STEP 2 CS CASE CONTENT IS IRREGULAR BEHAVIOR
Posted by the Office of the USMLE
Secretariat October 14, 2004
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At a recent national meeting of medical educators, there was a discussion of strategies that medical school faculty use to “debrief” examinees who have just taken the USMLE
Step 2 Clinical Skills (CS) examination. Participants from several schools indicated that they are systematically collecting descriptions of case content from medical students, recording the information, and sharing it with students who have not yet taken Step 2 CS.
While the sponsors of USMLE
Step 2 CS have no objection to examinees obtaining accurate, practical, general advice for taking Step 2 CS, under USMLE
rules, providing and/or disseminating information about case material is viewed as "irregular behavior," and examinees run serious risks if they disclose test material, including Step 2 CS case content. We actively monitor medical student websites and listservs for evidence of disclosure and are committed to treating incidents of disclosure as security violations. Examinees participating in this activity are on notice that they will be subject to a variety of sanctions, including permanent annotation of their USMLE
records and being barred from taking any Step examination for a period of time. By actively soliciting live case content from recent test takers, faculty may be asking students to violate USMLE
rules.
In the USMLE
[bleep] of Information , examinees are advised that subverting or attempting to subvert the USMLE
process constitutes irregular behavior. The [bleep] also states that providing or attempting to provide information relating to examination content that may give or attempt to give unfair advantage to individuals who will take the test in the future is irregular behavior. The policies and procedures governing the administration of the examinations have been established to ensure that no examinee or group of examinees receives unfair advantage on the examination, inadvertently or otherwise. The examination is designed to sample knowledge and skills across the broad content areas described. Unauthorized reproduction and dissemination of information and material seen or acquired during test administration provides potential advantage to future test takers and is detrimental to the security and integrity of the examination, and thereby to the protection of the public against unqualified physicians.
The sanctions are severe because the consequences of unqualified physicians passing licensing examinations and providing patient care are very serious. Medical students and faculty, in particular, should have a strong vested interest in maintaining examination security, not only because of adverse effects in provision of patient care, but also because unqualified residents will be poor teachers, supervisors, and colleagues in undergraduate and graduate medical education.
Examinees are on notice that we will aggressively take action against any individual who violates the security of USMLE
through the disclosure and/or dissemination of examination content.
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