Journal
CUREUS JOURNAL OF MEDICAL SCIENCE
Volume 13, Issue 8, Pages -Publisher
CUREUS INC
DOI: 10.7759/cureus.17157
Keywords
usmle; standardized patient; clinical skills; validity; licensure; medical school
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The USMLE Step 2 CS examination has been permanently suspended, highlighting concerns over cost, value, validity, and lack of examinee feedback. Future improvements should focus on addressing these issues.
In January 2021, the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) announced the permanent suspension of their Step 2 Clinical Skills (CS) examination. Launched in 2004, the Step 2 CS examination was intended to ensure that physicians entering graduate medical education possess the necessary information gathering, clinical reasoning, and communication skills necessary to provide patient care. Although the requirement that doctors pass a clinical skills examination as a condition of licensure likely improved some elements of medical education and physician practice, the Step 2 CS examination was deeply unpopular among many medical students since its inception. The demise of USMLE Step 2 CS provides an opportunity to re-examine the test's value and incorporate improvements in future iterations. However, doing so requires a clear understanding of why the test was so vigorously challenged. Here, we review the history of clinical skills examinations used for medical licensure in the United States and highlight the persistent concerns regarding Step 2 CS's cost, value, validity, and lack of examinee feedback before proposing future improvements to address each concern.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available