Comparing performance among male and female candidates in sex-specific clinical knowledge in the MRCGP.
BACKGROUND
Patients often seek doctors of the same sex, particularly for sex-specific complaints and also because of a perception that doctors have greater knowledge of complaints relating to their own sex. Few studies have investigated differences in knowledge by sex of  candidate on sex-specific questions in medical examinations.


OBJECTIVE
The aim was to compare the performance of males and females in sex-specific questions in a 200-item computer-based applied knowledge test for licensing UK GPs.


METHODS
A cross-sectional  design using routinely collected performance and demographic data from the first three versions of the Applied Knowledge Test, MRCGP, UK.


METHODS
Questions were classified as female specific, male specific, or sex neutral. The performance of males and females was analysed  using multiple analysis of covariance after adjusting for sex-neutral score and demographic confounders.


RESULTS
Data were included from 3627 candidates. After adjusting for sex-neutral score, age, time since qualification, year of speciality training, ethnicity, and country  of primary medical qualification, there were differences in performance in sex-specific questions. Males performed worse than females on female-specific questions (-4.2%, 95% confidence interval [CI] = -5.7 to -2.6) but did not perform significantly better than females on  male-specific questions (0.3%, 95% CI = -2.6 to 3.2%.


CONCLUSIONS
There was evidence of better performance by females in female-specific questions but this was small relative to the size of the test. Differential performance of males and females in sex-specific questions  in a licensing examination may have implications for vocational and post-qualification general practice training.
Primary and Prehospital Healthcare, School of Health and Social Care, University of Lincoln, UK. nsiriwardena@lincoln.ac.uk
A Niroshan
AN
Siriwardena
Bill
B
Irish
Zahid B
ZB
Asghar
Hilton
H
Dixon
Paul
P
Milne
Catherine
C
Neden
Jo
J
Richardson
Carol
C
Blow
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000592:standards*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D058006:General Practice / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012737:Sex Factors; D044347:Sexology / Q000193:education*; D006113:United Kingdom