ReviewJournal of medical education and curricular development
Can ChatGPT-3.5 Pass a Medical Exam? A Systematic Review of ChatGPT's Performance in Academic Testing.
Review in Journal of medical education and curricular development. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Evaluating the Potential and Accuracy of ChatGPT-3.5 and 4.0 in Medical Licensing and In-Training Examinations: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.JMIR medical education · 2025Pooled it
- Performance of ChatGPT-3.5 and GPT-4 in national licensing examinations for medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, and nursing: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC medical education · 2024Pooled it
- Performance of ChatGPT Across Different Versions in Medical Licensing Examinations Worldwide: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Pooled it
- Accuracy of ChatGPT-4o in Identifying Anatomical Structures on Cadaveric Images: A Practical Anatomy Examination Study.Clinical anatomy (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Evaluating and leveraging large language models in clinical pharmacology and therapeutics assessment: From exam takers to exam shapers.British journal of clinical pharmacology · 2026Article
- Performance of large language models on undergraduate endodontic multiple-choice questions.BMC oral health · 2026Article
- Utility of Large Language Models for Congenital Microtia Reconstruction Education: Comparison of the Performance of Claude, GPT, and Gemini.Aesthetic plastic surgery · 2026Article
- Evaluation of the performance of ChatGPT-4 and ChatGPT-4o as a learning tool in endodontics.International endodontic journal · 2026Article
- Comparative performance of artificial intelligence models in intensive care nursing questions: an evaluation of ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Google Gemini.BMC nursing · 2026Article
- Artificial Intelligence in Psychiatry Training: Comparative Insights from Nine Large Language Models Across Cultural and Exam Contexts.The Psychiatric quarterly · 2026Article
- Benchmarking five large language models in medical genetics: a bilingual comparative evaluation using published and novel expert-authored questions.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Article
- Impact of prompting on large language model performance: ChatGPT-4 performance on the 2023 hand surgery self-assessment examination.Journal of hand and microsurgery · 2025Article
- Factors Associated with Lower Performance of Artificial Intelligence on Answering Undergraduate Medical Education Multiple-Choice Questions.Medical science educator · 2025Article
- Evaluation of domain-specific vs general purpose GPT models for SCI-related gastrointestinal, cardiovascular and pulmonary complications.The journal of spinal cord medicine · 2025Article
- Evaluating Large Language Models for Preoperative Patient Education in Superior Capsular Reconstruction: Comparative Study of Claude, GPT, and Gemini.JMIR perioperative medicine · 2025Article
- First steps toward building natural history of diseases computationally: Lessons learned from the Noonan syndrome use case.American journal of human genetics · 2025Article
- Article
- ChatGPT's Performance on Portuguese Medical Examination Questions: Comparative Analysis of ChatGPT-3.5 Turbo and ChatGPT-4o Mini.JMIR medical education · 2025Article
- ChatGPT-4 Performance on German Continuing Medical Education-Friend or Foe (Trick or Treat)? Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial.JMIR research protocols · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveWe, therefore, aim to conduct a systematic review to assess the academic potential of ChatGPT-3.5, along with its strengths and limitations when giving medical exams.
methodFollowing PRISMA guidelines, a systemic search of the literature was performed using electronic databases PUBMED/MEDLINE, Google Scholar, and Cochrane. Articles from their inception till April 4, 2023, were queried. A formal narrative analysis was conducted by systematically arranging similarities and differences between individual findings together.
resultsAfter rigorous screening, 12 articles underwent this review. All the selected papers assessed the academic performance of ChatGPT-3.5. One study compared the performance of ChatGPT-3.5 with the performance of ChatGPT-4 when giving a medical exam. Overall, ChatGPT performed well in 4 tests, averaged in 4 tests, and performed badly in 4 tests. ChatGPT's performance was directly proportional to the level of the questions' difficulty but was unremarkable on whether the questions were binary, descriptive, or MCQ-based. ChatGPT's explanation, reasoning, memory, and accuracy were remarkably good, whereas it failed to understand image-based questions, and lacked insight and critical thinking.
conclusionChatGPT-3.5 performed satisfactorily in the exams it took as an examinee. However, there is a need for future related studies to fully explore the potential of ChatGPT in medical education.
Indexed as
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.