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The hospital educational environment and performance of residents in the General Medicine In-Training Examination: a multicenter study in Japan

Authors Shimizu T , Tsugawa Y, Tanoue Y, Konishi R , Nishizaki Y, Kishimoto M, Shiojiri T, Tokuda Y

Received 17 March 2013

Accepted for publication 27 May 2013

Published 29 July 2013 Volume 2013:6 Pages 637—640

DOI https://doi.org/10.2147/IJGM.S45336

Checked for plagiarism Yes

Review by Single anonymous peer review

Peer reviewer comments 5



Taro Shimizu,1 Yusuke Tsugawa,2,3 Yusuke Tanoue,4 Ryota Konishi,5 Yuji Nishizaki,6 Mitsumasa Kishimoto,7 Toshiaki Shiojiri,8 Yasuharu Tokuda9

1Hospitalist Division, Department of Medicine, Nerima Hikarigaoka Hospital, Tokyo, Japan; 2Division of General Medicine and Primary Care, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; 3Center for Clinical Epidemiology, St Luke's Life Science Institute, 4Department of Vascular and Oncological Surgery, Hospital of Tokyo University, 5Department of General Internal Medicine, Kanto Rousai Hospital, 6Department of Cardiology, Juntendo University School of Medicine, 7Division of Rheumatology, St Luke's International Hospital, Tokyo, Japan; 8Asahi Chuo Hospital, Chiba, Japan; 9Department of Medicine, Tsukuba University Mito Kyodo General Hospital, Mito City, Ibaraki, Japan

Background: It is believed that the type of educational environment in teaching hospitals may affect the performance of medical knowledge base among residents, but this has not yet been proven.
Objective: We aimed to investigate the association between the hospital educational environment and the performance of the medical knowledge base among resident physicians in Japanese teaching hospitals.
Methods: To assess the knowledge base of medicine, we conducted the General Medicine In-Training Examination (GM-ITE) for second-year residents in the last month of their residency. The items of the exam were developed based on the outcomes designated by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare. The educational environment was evaluated using the Postgraduate Hospital Educational Environment Measure (PHEEM) score, which was assessed by a mailed survey 2 years prior to the exam. A mixed-effects linear regression model was employed for the analysis of variables associated with a higher score.
Results: Twenty-one teaching hospitals participated in the study and a total of 206 residents (67 women) participated and completed the exam. There were no residents who declined to participate in the exam. The mean GM-ITE score was 58 (standard deviation 8.4). The mixed-effects linear regression analysis showed that a higher PHEEM score was associated with a higher GM-ITE score (P = 0.02). Having a department of general medicine, and hospital location in a provincial community (versus an urban setting), were also shown to have a significant relationship with the higher score  (P = 0.03, and P = 0.02, respectively).
Conclusion: We found that the performance of the medical knowledge base of resident physicians was significantly associated with the educational environment of their hospitals. Improvement of the educational environment in teaching hospitals might be crucial for enhancing the performance of resident physicians in Japan.

Keywords: outcome-based education, postgraduate medical education, educational environment, general medicine, provincial hospital

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