gms | German Medical Science

Following political changes in the 90s also economy and education underwent significant change. In the field of medical education one of most important changes followed Polish accession to European Community. It was the introduction of national level medical and dental license exams.

Prior to 2004 last year students had to pass a fixed set of exams at their own University on internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, anesthesiology and intensive care. At some universities there where additional exams including forensic and legal medicine or family medicine. There was no set standard so quality was assured only by unified teaching programs. Real verification of students’ knowledge was not compared between different schools until entry exams to specialty training. Those entry exams were unified at national level but would be different for different specialties so offered limited field for comparison.

In 2004 national level exam was introduced. It was called State Physician/Dental Exam (SP/DE). Blueprint of that exam was based on internship composition and took place approximately 1 year after graduation. Exam consisted of 200 MCQ items proportionally but not equally divided between internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, ob-gynecology, family medicine, anesthesiology with intensive care and emergency medicine and medical law. Based on the results of that exam ranking lists for specialty training were made. Exam became important part of individual rankings of students (although lists were confidential), rankings of medical schools and also specialties. In general, exam was well perceived despite some issues with quality of items in the early years. Over the time Center of Medical Exams (CME) which administers the test improved the exam. Items are written by content experts in all above mentioned fields and then verified by item writing experts from CME.

In 2012 new law was passed and SP/DE was changed to Physician/Dental Final Exam (P/DFE). It takes place right after graduation and enables direct transition from undergraduate education to specialty training. Blueprint of exam, source of items and administrative body is still the same. Pass/fail threshold is fixed at 54%. Young physicians and students will be able to take the exam twice a year: in September and February. First P/DFE was taken by 3523 candidates. Mean result was 132,7 (176–50), 92% of candidates passed the exam. Those results are similar to those achieved by candidates in the past.

At the moment there is no practical part of the exam. Each school is obliged to test communication skills and procedural competencies of graduates. This year a Consortium of all public medical schools was established to introduce common standards in teaching and assessment of other aspects of education not covered in P/DFE.