BOTH THE Leaving Certificate and Health Professions Admissions Test (HPat) independently predict how well an individual will perform in medical school, new research has found.
The authors say this raises a question about the need for the controversial HPat, which opponents say has prevented high-performing students securing a place in Irish medical schools.
With the aim of investigating the ability of the HPat to predict academic success in medicine, doctors from the radiology department at Tallaght hospital administered a modified HPat to a group of doctors and medical students.
Separately, a college examination score was calculated for each individual using a sum of overall results from every year of medical school examinations. A total of 27 qualified doctors and 29 final-year students sat the HPat.
The results, published in the current issue of the Irish Medical Journal, found a significant correlation between HPat score and college results and between Leaving Cert score and college results, but they found no correlation between HPat and Leaving Cert scores.
There was no difference in HPat scores between males and females; nor was any significant difference detected between graduate entry students and those who entered medical school directly after secondary education.
Dr William Torreggiani and his colleagues said: “The fact that both Leaving Certificate and HPat independently predict how well an individual will perform in medical school raises the question of whether we need both tests to select medical students.
“What exactly the HPat adds to the medical school admission process in Ireland remains to be answered.”
However they acknowledge both the small scale of their study and the fact that it does not specifically determine how well either the HPat or the Leaving Certificate assess a doctor’s ability to communicate, empathise or problem- solve.
Research published earlier this year found that consultants who sat a modified HPat had poorer average scores than students of graduate medical schools in the Republic. Of 222 candidates who sat the HPat, junior doctors training to be surgeons had the lowest average scores.