Practice simulated office orals as a predictor of Certification examination performance in family medicine

Objective To determine if performance on practice simulated office orals (SOOs) conducted during residency training could predict residents' performance on the SOO component of the College of Family Physicians of Canada's (CFPC's) final Certification examination. Design Prospective cohort study. Setting University of Ottawa in Ontario. Participants Family medicine residents enrolled in the University of Ottawa's Family Medicine Residency program between July 1, 2012, and June 30, 2014, who were eligible to write the CFPC Certification examination in the spring of 2014 and who had participated in all 4 practice SOO examination sessions; 23 residents met these criteria. Main outcome measures Scores on practice SOO sessions during fall 2012, spring 2013, fall 2013, and spring 2014; and the SOO component score on the spring 2014 administration of the CFPC Certification examination. Results Weighted least squares regression analysis using the 4 practice SOO session scores significantly predicted the final Certification examination SOO score (P<.05), with an adjusted R-2 value of 0.29. Additional analysis revealed that the mean scores for the cohort generated at each time point were statistically different from each other (P<.001) and that the relationship over time could be represented by either a linear relationship or a quadratic relationship. A generalizability study generated a relative generalizability coefficient of 0.63. Conclusion Our results confirm the usefulness of practice SOOs as a progress test and demonstrate the feasibility of using them to predict final scores on the SOO component of the CFPC's Certification examination.