failed an osce
 

so long story short, i failed an osce. at our school if you fail any part of the rotation (evaluation, shelf, osce), you fail the entire entire rotation. i happened to get honors on my evaluation and my shelf score is still tbd but judging by whats written in our clerkship manual, the highest grade i can get now is pass after remediation.

so how much will this impact me when i apply to residency? i'm looking to apply for EM. i have a good step 1 score (>230) as well as numerous letters of rec (surgery, family, peds, etc.). ironically, i have a LOR from the preceptor of the rotation that I failed.

i know generally step 1 scores + reputation of the school are the most important things residency directors look but not sure where failing a rotation falls. any help is appreciated, thanks.

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Uh...the average Step score for EM was a bit above the national average last year and has been trending upward for awhile. There were no unfilled EM spots this year. I don't think your assessment is quite accurate.

That said, a "pass" really isn't going to be that big of a deal. What you should worry about is if your transcript will show just the pass or the pass and the fail. Failing a rotation isn't the end of the world, but it certainly isn't good. Clinical grades are right up there with Step scores as the most important thing on your application, so having failed a rotation may possibly prevent you from getting some interviews. At the very least, I'd expect to get asked about it and have a good explanation. If the failing grade won't show up, you're in good shape.

You will be fine OP.

if i successfully remediate the osce, the final grade for the rotation will show "remediated pass" instead of just "pass" so i guess they will be able to tell.

man i am tripping out right now. i definitely knew i missed some stuff but didn't expect to fail the osce.

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thanks for the feedback guys. this is sort of kick in a butt...gotta get my stuff straightened out for my remaining rotations. hope it doesn't cost me any residency interviews...

How many spots were available to scramble into for internal medicine/family med after the initial match? In EM, there are no longer scramble options available. It's a moderately competitive specialty. Not super competitive, but it's not non-competitive.

I don't know why you constantly point out EM as non-competitive. It's certainly more competitive than IM from most accounts from applicants. IM like rads is a very top heavy specialty so that brings up the average step 1 because programs like MGH/UCSF have very high step 1 averages. You don't really see that in EM; it's not a specialty that is really big on objective evaluation, being much more about the quality of SLORs etc. It's also a specialty with fewer FMGs (although there are more DOs than IM percentage-wise)

Furthermore, if you look at US seniors with 201-210 step 1, EM had a 82% match rate as opposed to IM which had 94%. EM didn't have a higher than 90% match rate until you exceeded 220 on step 1, whereas even with 191-200 step 1 you had a 89% chance to match in IM.

Not quite, the reputation of your school doesn't matter nearly as much as clinical grades. If you don't believe me, here you go. Check out pages 31 and 33 for EM related stuff.

Derm had 11 spots open after the match. Certainly derm is >>>> EM.

He has a 230 on step 1. He will definitely match. Arguing wether EM is non-competitive versus mildly-competitive is semantics. In the world of SDN it is non-competitive, in the real world it is mildly-competitive.

You'll be more than OK on the match. Just make sure you pass the repeat otherwise (I'm assuming) you'll get a fail on the record.

Way to step up rad0nc...drizzt loves semantics and he'll argue them until the cows come home.

Tell that to this guy:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/show...&postcount=132

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/show...8&postcount=72

I'm sure he'd be very interested on how uncompetitive EM is.

I failed OSCE once
A bunch of my classmates failed it once or twice.

NOTHING HAPPENED TO US.