Your final grade is derived from two components: the clinical evaluation and the final written examination. The results of the clerkship and faculty evaluations are confidential and not made known to the sites until after all student grading has been completed.

Clinical Evaluation

Clinic preceptors, attendings, other faculty and residents will document their observations of your clinical performance on the standard clinical Clerkship Student Performance Evaluation form.

Included in the clinical evaluation is the assessment of your patient workups. Your written workups should be reviewed in depth by your preceptor on a weekly basis. These workups should be evaluated in terms of their content, completeness, conciseness, clarity and organization. One of the primary purposes for this evaluation is to provide you with feed-back for improvement. A total of four workups are required over the six week period. Sample workups are available in PDF format.

Also included in the clinical evaluation is the assessment of your oral presentation. You will prepare and give a 20-minute presentation for faculty and peers at your site on a topic of your choosing. You should define a broad topic and present one aspect of it. Your presentation will be evaluated on the basis of thoroughness, up-to-date and adequate content, clarity, organization, presentation, and use of references. An outline or abstract and bibliography are required. The oral presentation evaluation will be incorporated into the final Clinical Performance. You will present during Week 5.

Physician preceptors will carefully follow the descriptors as listed in the Clerkship Student Performance Evaluation form in assigning your final grade. There is a subjective component to this assessment.

Note: a "Fail" on the Clinical Evaluation component of the final grade means an automatic Fail for the course.

Written Examination

The final written examination, consisting of approximately 100 questions over an allotted time of 2 hrs and 10 minutes, is a standardized subject test from the National Board of Examiners (NBME). A score of 79 is required for Honors, 75 for High Pass, and 55 for a Pass. The test is designed to have a mean of 70 with a standard deviation of 8. This grading scheme is fixed and non-negotiable.

The NBME determines the time allotted. If you have a learning disability documented by the School of Medicine, please let us know before the last week of the clerkship to arrange extra time.

The NBME subject test is developed and reviewed by expert question writers, and provides the opportunity for students to experience the types of questions used on NBME board test. Use of this test also allows us to evaluate our clerkship with others across the nation. Reading the required materials is essential in order to perform well on this examination.

Students across the nation have found the APGO test bank a very useful study tool. Please access this by following this link to the APGO site.
Note: Please contact Dr. Mendiratta for the required logon and password information.

Breakdown of Questions

Grading Criteria

Grades are computed on the basis of two sources of information:

• Clinical evaluation:
  • Performance on clinical service
  • Workup review
  • Oral presentation
• Written examination

The Department of OB/GYN utilizes the grades of Honors (5), High Pass (4), Pass (3), Low Pass (2), and Fail (1). The final grade, as required by the School of Medicine and sent to the Dean, is calculated as follows:

*A failed Written Exam must be retaken, time to be determined by Clerkship Director. An exam score recheck service is available upon student request. The fee is $25.00 and is to be paid by the requesting student.

 Clerkship must be repeated after a second failed exam.
 A failed Clinical Evaluation may not be retaken and constitutes a final grade of Fail.

Clinical Eval | Written Exam | Grading

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