Selection for entry to medicine and specialist training.

The task of predicting professional performance during several decades of practice on the basis of any process which takes place a decade earlier is a virtual impossibility. Basically most Western medical schools seek some degree of academic excellence as predicted by school grades and pre-admission examinations. The data suggest that one need not be in the top 1-2% academically for success in medicine. One would therefore do better to place greater emphasis on the key personal qualities desirable in physicians in spite of even greater difficulty in assessing these factors. It seems that trained interviewers using a semi-structured interview can improve the selection process at a considerable expenditure of manpower. Selection for specialty training has heretofore not attempted to seek to identify those qualities specific for each specialty. Application of techniques for this purpose may be the desired trend in the coming years.