A dozen years ago, gaining admission to medical school in Poland was nearly miraculous. Only a few universities offered medical faculties, each accepting a maximum of a few dozen students. Today, private universities, where the dream of becoming a doctor can be realised for a fee, have become immensely popular.

However, medics and students are raising concerns about the quality of education for future doctors and the uncertain prospects of postgraduate training (also called residency). The situation is exacerbated by the exceptionally high pass rate of the medical school final examination. The Supreme Medical Council (Polish: Naczelna Izba Lekarska, NIL) calls for changes.

Medical students take numerous exams throughout their education, but the most important one awaits them at the end of their studies: the Medical Final Examination (Polish: Lekarski Egzamin Końcowy, LEK). This exam is a prerequisite for obtaining the doctor's title and admission to residency programmes. The Supreme Medical Council argues that the exam is far too easy to pass, mainly because of a freely available database of questions that students can memorise.

Jakub Kosikowski, spokesman for NIL, stated in an interview with Gazeta Wyborcza: "The effect of the freely available database is that more than 99% of those taking the LEK exam pass it."

Every year, only a dozen or so students, primarily foreign, fail the exam nationwide. The problem is that LEK determines admissions to residency programmes and with many candidates scoring between 95-100 per cent, it becomes challenging to distinguish between the more coveted, elite residencies and those with higher acceptance rates. Consequently, the exam results do not accurately reflect the varying levels of medical knowledge among candidates.

Jakub Kosikowski explains that a few years ago, medics sought to open the database of questions to check for errors. At that time, there were two thousand questions in the database. Now, there are more than three thousand, and many still contain factual errors.

"For example, the same question in the field of surgery might list 'liver' as the correct answer, while in internal medicine, the correct answer is 'lungs'. The same issue arises with a question about the most common lung cancer. These answers have to be memorised, which does little to genuinely assess the knowledge of a young doctor," explains the NIL spokesperson.

The Supreme Medical Council has two proposals: to gradually improve the questions and close access to the database. The other is more radical and suggests the immediate closure of the question database. Discussions are currently underway between the Ministry of Health, the Medical Examinations Center, and the Supreme Medical Council.

Source: Gazeta Wyborcza