Curriculum Reform at UT-Galveston Medical School Yields Improved Minority Student Board Results: In the past several years, there have been many efforts to reform medical education and improve the rate of passage of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE), in particular, Step 1, which is the most difficult part of the USMLE. According to a recent report published in Medical Education by Steven A. Lieberman, M.D., and other professors in the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB), the Step 1 examination has the lowest pass rate of all of the licensure sequence examinations, especially among under-represented minorities and women. UTMB has developed an approach that Lieberman and his colleagues report have had a remarkable effect on its students’ performance on the medical board exam.
Lieberman said that the overall rate of failure on the Step 1 exam has dropped from 7.5 percent to 2.3 percent, compared to a national rate in the 5 to 7 percent range. The change for minority students, which he described as “huge and surprising,” dropped from 16.9 to 3.9 percent, which is lower than the national failure rate for all students.
