A Medical School goes Pass/Fail only:
Why this is an Excellent Change!
By: LifeofaMedStudent
Well, I’m officially THAT old, bitter resident. I had to walk uphill to medical school 10 miles there and back. “In my day” medical school was fail, pass, high pass, or honors. I just found out that the medical school I graduated from has changed the first 2 years of science courses to simply pass/fail (while retaining the honors/high pass grades in clinical rotations). I am so annoyed! Why does this bother me? Because that’s not how it was when I was there! Because having the extra high pass and honors adds a great deal of unnecessary stress to students as they are adjusting to the brutal workload of medical school. BUT BECAUSE I HAD TO GO THROUGH IT, SO SHOULD EVERYONE ELSE, DAMMIT!
In all seriousness, I am in complete agreement and happy for the change.
The first year of medical school was the absolute hardest of my life. The stress was monumental. The coursework is overwhelming. The absolute competition, while often among friends, is real. With the high pass/honors in place, it wasn’t good enough to just pass. It wasn’t good enough to even high pass! Everyone, admit it or not, felt the pressure of having those staggered “grades.”
My first semester I had a hard time adjusting to the rigors of medical school. The study habits that had suited me so well in undergrad, were completely failing me. As a result, my grades that semester were also struggling. After one particularly bad exam result in anatomy, the idea of failing a class for the first time was unbelievably depressing. I had graduated high school and then even undergrad with a 4.0. I had never even had a “B” before. Yet, by November of that first semester, failing was a reality that I had to live with every day. The effect that had on my psyche was truly significant. Luckily, and with some serious hard work, I passed that anatomy class and all my classes that semester.
By the second semester, I began to find my study groove and was getting my confidence back. Even early in that semester, I no longer had to question whether I would pass or not. I was doing fine in all my courses. However, that did not take the pressure off. Once I realized, passing wasn’t the issue, it quickly became whether or not I would “high pass.” I’ve always been the type to push myself but in medical school, the looming issue is always the competition. What residency you can realistically apply to is greatly affected by the scores you receive. So once I knew I could pass my classes, I felt I had to high pass them. Just like that first semester trying to pass, I was now only happy with a “high pass.” That second semester I ended up with a “high pass” in three of my courses, and I was honestly less happy about it than when I’d found out I’d barely “passed” that first semester.
This trend would continue and by the 3rd year, I wasn’t even happy with a high pass and downright disappointed when I only passed a rotation. Then my 4th year of medical school I managed to receive an honors grade in 6 of my 9 courses. Yet I still was probably not as emotionally satisfied or happy as the day I found out I passed that first anatomy class I was so worried about.
While some might look at my story and feel I’m an example of why staggered grades HELPS students push to achieve more and more, I disagree. The added stress of always having the next higher grade to achieve is unnecessary and even harmful. Medical school IS stressful. It’s stressful no matter how you are graded. The goal IS to pass and be sufficiently trained to enter a residency, where only then are you actually trained to take care of patients. This isn’t 1960 and people are not practicing medicine unboarded straight from medical school. Medical school is now just a hoop to jump and likewise should simply be a course to pass.
I consider myself a fairly emotionally robust person. I have entered a specialty (anesthesia) where the choices I make can have an instantaneous life or death consequence. I have always handled pressure well and may even enjoy it a little bit. Not everyone is like that. Fewer still enjoy or thrive under it. The staggered honors-high pass grades tend to adversely affect these people the most. It takes good passing students, who will become good doctors, and crushes them under the added pressure. Deflates them with the unstopping competition. Eventually, burning them out toward medicine. And horrifically, every year a few of them decide to commit suicide.
Will a pass/fail only curriculum make medical school easy? Not even close. But it definitely could take unnecessary stress off students. That first two years of medical school were the hardest of my life. If had a pass/fail curriculum been in place maybe I wouldn’t be saying that today, at least after the second semester. And just maybe, there would be a lot of other great doctors out there that hadn’t been eventually burned out by the same system. If you are in a program that still uses a staggered honors grading system, I’ll give you the same advice that was given to me during those years: P = M.D, baby. Because you know what they call the person that graduates without a single honors grade? DOCTOR.
What do you think? Is Pass/Fail a way to improve student wellness? Or is there a benefit to having a staggered grading system? Add your thoughts in the comment section below!
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Thanks for blog post #Lifeofamedstudent! Definitely an important topic of conversation – do grades help or hinder student motivation? Grades can seem all important during medical school, but it seems fairly well accepted in postgraduate medical life that your med school grades don’t necessarily reflect your abilities as a doctor (and, in the UK at least, don’t feature too highly in the job application process).
Did the medical school initiating this change give their reasons for dropping grades for the pre-clinical years? Was it in aid of student welfare, or did they have another reason?
Thanks for commenting Joel! I see the same phenomenon, grades rarely important beyond the class itself. Even for residency interviews, grades are very low on the list to compare applicants, and certainly do not correlate with clinical abilities once finished and zero effect on job prospects. My thought is that during the basic science years, grades beyond Pass/Fail add very little in terms of benefit with a cost of increased stress. Now the question of do staggered grades add motivation? I would admit in some respects they probably do – but given their limited usefulness, I do not think the added stressor is worth any added “motivational” effect, which I suspect is small. Lastly, I am no sure what the reasoning behind the change was – but I’m glad it happened for that school! Thanks for reading!
Absofuckingly true! Medical school IS stressful. Phew. And P = M.D, hahaha.
Can we get a list on Medical Schools which are truly Pass/Fail. I know Harvard Medical School is one.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19704204/
Studies support your sentiments!
I come from a medical school that still releases numerical grades and class rankings. We could see among ourselves those who were studying to pass (often using less than savory methods to reach that goal) instead of studying to save a potential life someday. In the end, how could we save a life if we couldn’t even survive the semester?
I am in full support of pass/fail. It would have saved me a lot of distress those last few years. 😩
Hi! I come from a medical school that implements this system of grading. When we take a summative exam our grades our only posted as Pass/Fail the next day and the MPL score is also reported. Our Dean says this is to promote a collaborative environment instead of a competitive environment among students. We can attest that it is indeed less stressful but still an effective motivator to study smarter. Because our curriculum is also mostly self-directed learning, we are able to explore our own learning styles guided by facilitators. 🙂