ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Associations of Conference Attendance With Internal Medicine In-Training Examination Scores

https://doi.org/10.4065/83.4.449Get rights and content

OBJECTIVE

To examine the association of medical knowledge acquisition with attendance at specific conference types during internal medicine residency.

PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS

Attendance at residency core curriculum, morbidity and mortality, and medical grand rounds conferences was tracked for 195 residents who took the Internal Medicine In-Training Examination (IM-ITE) 421 times while attending the Internal Medicine Residency Program at Mayo Clinic's site in Rochester, MN, between October 1, 1999, and October 1, 2003. Random effects modeling was used to adjust for variables known or hypothesized to be associated with IM-ITE scores and allowed discrimination of effects of individual conferences on IM-ITE scores.

RESULTS

Total conference attendance was significantly associated with increased IM-ITE scores, with cohort mean increase of 2.30% (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.24% to 3.36%; P<.001). Core curriculum conferences accounted for much more of this association than either medical grand rounds or morbidity and mortality, with cohort mean increases of 2.05% (95% CI, 0.13% to 3.90%; P=.04), 0.24% (95% CI, -0.56% to 1.03%; P=.61), and 0.03% (95% CI, -1.69% to 1.69%; P=.97), respectively.

CONCLUSION

Conference attendance is associated with improved knowledge acquisition as measured by improved performance on IM-ITE. This finding does not appear to apply to all conferences at our institution but rather is specifically attributable to attendance at the core curriculum series.

Section snippets

PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS

Scores (ie, percentage of items correct) on the IM-ITE were used as the outcome measure for this study. The IM-ITE is given each October to more than 18,000 residents enrolled in US internal medicine residencies.5 This validated multiple-choice examination is developed jointly by the American College of Physicians, the Association of Program Directors of Internal Medicine, and the Association of Professors of Medicine.6 Minimum scores on the IM-ITE are associated with passing the American Board

RESULTS

Conference-specific attendance (mean ± SD; range) in the year before each IM-ITE was as follows: GR, 9.4±6.6; 0-40; MM, 16.9±8.8; 0-43; CC, 32.5±16.4; 0-78; sum of all conferences, 58.9±29.1; 0.0-158.0. Given 200 total conference opportunities, the mean percentage of total attendance was 29%; range, 0%-79%.

The results of the multivariate random effects model of attendance at each conference and the sum of all conferences with IM-ITE scores are displayed in Table 2. Bivariate regressions of

DISCUSSION

This study has demonstrated the attributable contribution of individual conferences to medical knowledge acquisition compared with the composite of all residency conferences. To our knowledge, this is the first published study to assess the associations of multiple conferences with IM-ITE score adjusted for previous IM-ITE scores and multiple known and hypothesized predictors of IM-ITE outcome.

These results are statistically and educationally significant. Scores on the IM-ITE are reported as

CONCLUSION

Conference attendance is associated with statistically and educationally significant improvements in IM-ITE score. Much of this association is related to attendance at the CC rather than MM or GR conferences. Whereas the last 2 venues had insignificant associations with IM-ITE scores in our cohort, attendance at these conferences could be beneficial to residents for purposes other than medical knowledge acquisition as measured by the IM-ITE.

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