ArticleThe British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners2012
Comparing performance among male and female candidates in sex-specific clinical knowledge in the MRCGP.
Article in The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- E-learning modules to improve clinical reasoning and practice: a prospective comparative study.MedEdPublish (2016) · 2023Article
- Sex differences in fitness to practise test scores: a cohort study of GPs.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2019Article
- Effect of sex on specialty training application outcomes: a longitudinal administrative data study of UK medical graduates.BMJ open · 2019Article
- Sex and gender in medical education: a national student survey.Biology of sex differences · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPatients often seek doctors of the same sex, particularly for sex-specific complaints and also because of a perception that doctors have greater knowledge of complaints relating to their own sex. Few studies have investigated differences in knowledge by sex of candidate on sex-specific questions in medical examinations.
aimThe aim was to compare the performance of males and females in sex-specific questions in a 200-item computer-based applied knowledge test for licensing UK GPs. DESIGN AND
settingA cross-sectional design using routinely collected performance and demographic data from the first three versions of the Applied Knowledge Test, MRCGP, UK.
methodQuestions were classified as female specific, male specific, or sex neutral. The performance of males and females was analysed using multiple analysis of covariance after adjusting for sex-neutral score and demographic confounders.
resultsData were included from 3627 candidates. After adjusting for sex-neutral score, age, time since qualification, year of speciality training, ethnicity, and country of primary medical qualification, there were differences in performance in sex-specific questions. Males performed worse than females on female-specific questions (-4.2%, 95% confidence interval [CI] = -5.7 to -2.6) but did not perform significantly better than females on male-specific questions (0.3%, 95% CI = -2.6 to 3.2%.
conclusionThere was evidence of better performance by females in female-specific questions but this was small relative to the size of the test. Differential performance of males and females in sex-specific questions in a licensing examination may have implications for vocational and post-qualification general practice training.
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