AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON OF KNOWLEDGE LEVELS OF MEDICAL-STUDENTS -THE MAASTRICHT PROGRESS TEST

The increasing international mobility of medical students has inspired the search for an international assessment format. As one step along this line, kinetics of knowledge acquisition and final cognitive level s of students were compared among one Dutch, one German and four Itali an medical faculties. For this comparison, the Maastricht Progress Tes t (MPT) was used. For four out of the six participating faculties, it was possible to compare the level of knowledge of sixth-year students. These data showed no significant differences on the test as a whole. On the other hand, as judged from cross-sectional data on students fro m all study years, the kinetics of knowledge acquisition showed differ ent trends. In one school applying problem-based learning, acquisition of knowledge by students occurred almost linearly. In another school, over the first 2 years, acquisition of knowledge occurred only in the basic sciences but not in clinical or public health/behavioural scien ces. In two other schools over that same period, students seemed to ga in no knowledge at all. In some faculties, a marked boost in knowledge was noted with third- or fourth-year students. These findings may be explained by peculiarities of the respective curricula, selection of s tudents during their studies, and national or local assessment procedu res. It is preliminarily concluded that the different educational appr oaches and assessment systems in medical education in Europe seem to h ave only limited influence on the final level of knowledge of the grad uates. On the other hand, these differences may influence the kinetics of knowledge acquisition, especially in distinct domains like basic o r clinical sciences. Therefore, the MPT may not be suitabe to solve th e problem of assessment of individual international exchange students, but it may be helpful in identifying corresponding cognitive levels o n, for example, basic sciences for students in different curricula.