PREDICTING PASS RATES ON THE AMERICAN-BOARD-OF-INTERNAL-MEDICINE CERTIFYING EXAMINATION

Our objective was to determine the ability of the internal medicine In -Training Examination (ITE) to predict pass or fail outcomes on the Am erican Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) certifying examination and to develop an externally validated predictive model and a simple equatio n that can be used by residency directors to provide probability feedb ack for their residency programs. We collected a study sample of 155 i nternal medicine residents from the three Virginia internal medicine p rograms and a validation sample of 64 internal medicine residents from a residency program outside Virginia. Scores from both samples were c ollected across three class cohorts. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov z test ind icated no statistically significant difference between the distributio n of scores for the two samples (z = 1.284, p = .074), Results of the logistic model yielded a statistically significant prediction of ABIM pass or fail performance from ITE scores (Wald = 35.49, SE = 0.036, df = 1, p < .005) and overall correct classifications for the study samp le and validation sample at 79% and 75%, respectively. The ITE is a us eful tool in assessing the Likelihood of a resident's passing or faili ng the ABIM certifying examination but is less predictive for resident s who received ITE scores between 49 and 66.