Longitudinal relationships between Korean medical students’ academic performance in medical knowledge and clinical performance examinations: a retrospective longitudinal study

This study investigated the longitudinal relationships between performance on 3 examinations assessing medical knowledge and clinical skills among Korean medical students in the clinical phase. This study addressed the stability of each examination score and the interrelationships among examinations over time. A retrospective longitudinal study was conducted at Yonsei University College of Medicine in Korea with a cohort of 112 medical students over 2 years. The students were in their third year in 2022 and progressed to the fourth year in 2023. We obtained comprehensive clinical science examination (CCSE) and progress test (PT) scores 3 times (T1–T3), and clinical performance examination (CPX) scores twice (T1 and T2). Autoregressive cross-lagged models were fitted to analyze their relationships.