The impact of assignment strategy on the performance of postgraduate trainees: An analysis of the assessment scores database in a military medicine system

Background: Medical students who graduate after 2003 need to participate in the "Postgraduate Primary Care Medical Training Program," provided by the Taiwan Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation. We wish to know how the education and assignment strategy influences National Defense Medical Center (NDMC) graduates. We examined whether the performance of postgraduate year (PGY) trainees would be affected by the assignment strategies. Materials and Methods: We consecutively collected 173 NDMC graduated trainees who participated in 6-months of PGY training and another 94 trainees who participated for 1-year. During the training period, all the trainees were evaluated by several assessment tools. Trainees were dichotomized according to the levels of dispatched hospitals and preassigned specialty, respectively, to evaluate those effects on the performance of the 6-month PGY training period. Results: We describe the assessment scores of NDMC graduate M.D. trainees engaged in the Tri-Service General Hospital (TSGH) PGY training program. PGY trainees who were preassigned to TSGH due to better overall averages in medical school had better scores in case-based discussion, mini-clinical evaluation exercise, and direct observation of procedural skills than those who were preassigned to the Regional Teaching Hospitals. There was no statistically significant difference in the overall scores. The preassigned specialties themselves did not affect the performance in PGY training. Incorporation of PGY scores in the assignment strategy significantly elevated the performance of PGY trainees who were dispatched to TSGH. Conclusion: The accumulated PGY training database provides educators a unique opportunity in reviewing the effects of education policies and strategies. Assignment strategy could affect the performance of PGY trainees during their training period