In recruitment, the multiple mini-interview (MMI)[1] is an interview format that uses many short independent assessments, typically in a timed circuit, to obtain an aggregate score of each candidate's soft skills. In 2001, the McMaster University Medical School began developing the MMI system, to address two widely recognized problems. First, it has been shown that traditional interview formats or simulations of educational situations do not accurately predict performance in medical school. Secondly, when a licensing or regulatory body reviews the performance of a physician subsequent to patient complaints, the most frequent issues of concern are those of the non-cognitive skills, such as interpersonal skills, professionalism and ethical/moral judgment. Since its formal introduction at McMaster University Medical School in 2004, it has been adopted by medical, dental, pharmacy, and veterinary schools around the world.
Introduction
editInterviews have been used widely for different purposes, including assessment and recruitment. Candidate assessment is normally deemed successful when the scores generated by the measuring tool predict for future outcomes of interest, such as job performance or job retention. Meta-analysis of the human resource literature has demonstrated low to moderate ability of interviews to predict for future job performance.[2] How well a candidate scores on one interview is only somewhat correlated with how well that candidate scores on the next interview. Marked shifts in scores are buffered when collecting many scores on the same candidate, with a greater buffering effect provided by multiple interviews than by multiple interviewers acting as a panel for one interview.[3] The score assigned by an interviewer in the first few minutes of an interview is rarely changed significantly over the course of the rest of the interview, an effect known as the halo effect.
Therefore, even very short interviews within an MMI format provide similar ability to differentiate reproducibly between candidates.[4] Ability to reproducibly differentiate between candidates, also known as overall test reliability, is markedly higher for the MMI than for other interview formats.[1] This has translated into higher predictive validity, correlating for future performance much more highly than standard interviews.[5][6][7][8][9]
History
editAiming to enhance predictive correlations with future performance in medical school, post-graduate medical training, and future performance in practice, McMaster University began research and development of the MMI in 2001. The initial pilot was conducted on 18 graduate students volunteering as "medical school candidates". High overall test reliability (0.81) led to a larger study conducted in 2002 on real medical school candidates, many of whom volunteered after their standard interview to stay for the MMI. Overall test reliability remained high,[1] and subsequent follow-up through medical school and on to national licensure examination (Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination Parts I and II) revealed the MMI to be the best predictor for subsequent clinical performance,[5][7] professionalism,[6] and ability to communicate with patients and successfully obtain national licensure.[7][8]
Since its formal inception at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in 2004, the MMI subsequently spread as an admissions test across medical schools, and to other healing arts disciplines. By 2008, the MMI was being used as an admissions test by the majority of medical schools in Canada, Australia, Israel, and Brunei. Also in 2008, a pilot test was conducted with the tool at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, and went live in the fall of that year, as the first implementation of MMI at a medical college in the United States;[10][11][12][13] additional medical schools in the country have since adopted the process.[14]
These lead to the development of a McMaster spin-off company, APT Inc., to commercialize the MMI system. The MMI was branded as ProFitHR and made available to both the academic and corporate sector.[15] By 2009, the list of other disciplines using the MMI included schools for dentistry, pharmacy, midwifery, physiotherapy and occupational therapy, veterinary medicine, ultrasound technology, nuclear medicine technology, X-ray technology, medical laboratory technology, chiropody, dental hygiene, and postgraduate training programs in dentistry and medicine.
MMI procedure
edit- Interview stations – the domain(s) being assessed at any one station are variable, and normally reflects the objectives of the selecting institution. Examples of domains include the "soft skills" – ethics, professionalism, interpersonal relationships, ability to manage, communicate, collaborate, as well as perform a task. An MMI interview station takes considerable time and effort to produce; it is composed of several parts, including the stem question, probing questions for the interviewer, and a scoring sheet.
- Circuit(s) of stations – to reduce costs of the MMI significantly below that of most interviews,[16] the interview "stations" are kept short (eight minutes or less) and are conducted simultaneously in a circuit as a bell-ringer examination. The preferred number of stations depends to some extent on the characteristics of the candidate group being interviewed, though nine interviews per candidate represents a reasonable minimum.[3] The circuit of interview stations should be within sufficiently close quarters to allow candidates to move from interview room to interview room. Multiple parallel circuits can be run, each circuit with the same set of interview stations, depending upon physical plant limitations.
- Interviewers – one interviewer per interview station is sufficient.[3] In a typical MMI, each interviewer stays in the same interview throughout, as candidates rotate through. The interviewer thus scores each candidate based upon the same interview scenario throughout the course of the test.
- Candidates – each candidate rotates through the circuit of interviews. For example, if each interview station is eight minutes, and there are nine interview stations, it will take the nine candidates being assessed on that circuit 72 minutes to complete the MMI. Each of the candidates begins at a different interview station, rotating to the next interview station at the ringing of the bell.
- Administrators – each circuit requires at least one administrator to ensure that the MMI is conducted fairly and on time.
Utility of the MMI
editTest security breaches tend not to unduly influence results.[17] While the creators of the test claim that sex of candidate and candidate status as under-represented minority tends not to unduly influence results,[1][18] independent research has demonstrated that the MMI causes both gender[19] and socioeconomic[20] bias. Although some research have suggested that preparatory courses taken by the candidate tend not to unduly influence results,[21] such research has not been duplicated and further research has to be done to make any scientifically sound argument for or against preparatory courses. Furthermore, such research must be designed to directly examine the efficacy of leading preparatory companies' courses rather than general evaluation. Although, it may be argued that all the validation so far has been done by McMaster and/or its affiliated company which constitute a conflict of interest and any result must be interpreted with caution. However, it is worth noting that MMI performance can be compromised by introversion.[22]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ a b c d Eva KW, Reiter HI, Rosenfeld J, Norman GR. An admissions OSCE: the multiple mini-interview. Medical education, 38:314–326 (2004).
- ^ Barrick, MR; Mount, MK (1991). "The Big 5 personality dimensions and job performance: a meta-analysis". Personnel Psychology. 44: 1–26. doi:10.1111/j.1744-6570.1991.tb00688.x.
- ^ a b c Eva, KW; Reiter, HI; Rosenfeld, J; Norman, GR (June 2004). "The relationship between interviewer characteristics and ratings assigned during a Multiple Mini-Interview". Academic Medicine. 79 (6): 602–9. doi:10.1097/00001888-200406000-00021. PMID 15165983.
- ^ Dodson, M; Crotty, B; Prideaux, D; Carne, R; Ward, A; de Leeuw, E (February 2009). "The multiple mini-interview: how long is long enough?". Medical Education. 43 (2): 168–74. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2923.2008.03260.x. PMID 19161488.
- ^ a b Eva, KW; Reiter, HI; Rosenfeld, J; Norman, GR (October 2004). "The ability of the Multiple Mini-Interview to predict pre-clerkship performance in medical school". Academic Medicine. 79 (10 Suppl): S40–2. doi:10.1097/00001888-200410001-00012. PMID 15383385.
- ^ a b Reiter, HI; Eva, KW; Rosenfeld, J; Norman, GR (April 2007). "Multiple Mini-Interview Predicts for Clinical Clerkship Performance, National Licensure Examination Performance". Medical Education. 41 (4): 378–84. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.544.6911. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2929.2007.02709.x. PMID 17430283.
- ^ a b c Eva KW, Reiter HI, Trinh K, Wasi P, Rosenfeld J, Norman GR. "Predictive validity of the multiple mini-interview for selecting medical trainees. Accepted for publication January 2009 in Medical Education.
- ^ a b Hofmeister, M; Lockyer, J; Crutcher, R (June 2009). "The multiple mini-interview for selection of international medical graduates into family medicine residency education". Medical Education. 43 (6): 573–9. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2923.2009.03380.x. PMID 19493182.
- ^ Hadad, Aviel; Gafni, Naomi; Moshinsky, Avital; Turvall, Elliot; Ziv, Amitai; Israeli, Avi (November 2016). "The multiple mini-interviews as a predictor of peer evaluations during clinical training in medical school". Medical Teacher. 38 (11): 1172–1179. doi:10.1080/0142159X.2016.1181730. ISSN 1466-187X. PMID 27249334.
- ^ Castano, Ellie (July 8, 2013). "Illuminating who medical school applicants really are". UMassMedNOW. umassmed.edu. Archived from the original on October 8, 2023. Retrieved February 9, 2015.
- ^ Koenig, Angela (August 17, 2009). "UC College of Medicine Changes Admission Process to Screen for Healers, Not Just Health Care Providers". UC Health News. healthnewsuc.edu. Archived from the original on March 7, 2016. Retrieved October 8, 2023.
- ^ Koenig, Angela (September 8, 2011). "Entrance into UC Medical School Based on New Guidelines". UC Health News. healthnewsuc.edu. Archived from the original on March 8, 2016. Retrieved October 8, 2023.
- ^ Collins, Thomas R. (September 6, 2012). "New Med School Screening Recommendations to Assess Ethics, Professionalism". ENTtoday.org. Archived from the original on October 8, 2023.
- ^ Harris, Gardiner (July 10, 2011). "New for Aspiring Doctors, the People Skills Test". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 27, 2023. Retrieved October 8, 2023.
- ^ "Welcome to ProFitHR".
- ^ Rosenfeld J, Eva KW, Reiter HI, Trinh K. A Cost-Efficiency Comparison between the Multiple Mini-Interview and Panel-based Admissions Interviews. Advanced Health science Education Theory Pract. 2008 Mar;13(1):43–58
- ^ Reiter, HI; Salvatori, P; Rosenfeld, J; Trinh, K; Eva, KW (2006). "The Impact of Measured Violations of Test Security on Multiple-Mini Interview (MMI)". Medical Education. 40 (1): 36–42. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2929.2005.02348.x. PMID 16441321.
- ^ Moreau, K; Reiter, HI; Eva, KW (2006). "Comparison of Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal Applicants for Admissions on the Multiple Mini-Interview using Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal Interviewers". Teaching and Learning in Medicine. 18 (1): 58–61. doi:10.1207/s15328015tlm1801_12. PMID 16354142.
- ^ Ross, Marshall; Walker, Ian; Cooke, Lara; Raman, Maitreyi; Ravani, Pietro; Coderre, Sylvain; McLaughlin, Kevin (June 2017). "Are Female Applicants Rated Higher Than Males on the Multiple Mini-Interview? Findings From the University of Calgary". Academic Medicine. 92 (6): 841–846. doi:10.1097/ACM.0000000000001466. ISSN 1938-808X. PMID 28557950.
- ^ Jerant, Anthony; Fancher, Tonya; Fenton, Joshua J.; Fiscella, Kevin; Sousa, Francis; Franks, Peter; Henderson, Mark (December 2015). "How Medical School Applicant Race, Ethnicity, and Socioeconomic Status Relate to Multiple Mini-Interview-Based Admissions Outcomes: Findings From One Medical School". Academic Medicine. 90 (12): 1667–1674. doi:10.1097/ACM.0000000000000766. ISSN 1938-808X. PMID 26017355.
- ^ Griffin, B; Harding, DW; Wilson, IG; Yeomans, ND (September 2008). "Does practice make perfect? The effect of coaching and retesting on selection tests used for admission to an Australian medical school". Medical Journal of Australia. 189 (5): 270–3. doi:10.5694/j.1326-5377.2008.tb02024.x. PMID 18759725.
- ^ Jerant, A; Griffin, E; Rainwater, J; Henderson, M; Sousa, F; Bertakis, KD; Fenton, JJ; Franks, P (September 2012). "Does applicant personality influence multiple mini-interview performance and medical school acceptance offers?". Academic Medicine. 87 (9): 1250–9. doi:10.1097/ACM.0b013e31826102ad. PMID 22836836.