Evaluating the Academic Performance of Mustansiriyah Medical College Teaching Staff vs. Final-Year Students Failure Rates

Abstract

Background: Evaluating medical colleges' teaching staff performance is an essential topic for evaluating academic performance. Objective: To assess the academic performance of the teaching staff in the pediatric, surgical, and gynecology branches in comparison to the medicine branch performance from 2014 to 2018. Methods: The total number and the number of failed students being examined in final years were obtained officially from the examination committee in Mustansiriyah Medical College for the final 6th-year students for the four main branches (medicine, pediatrics, surgery, and obstetrics and gynecology). The students' number in the medicine branch was used as the control group against which the performance of other branches was compared. We utilized the odds ratio from meta-analysis statistics and compared student failure and success rates. Results: The odd ratio of pediatric branch performance versus medicine branch was 1.02 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.68–1.53, while for surgery, it was 0.67 with a 95% CI (0.46 to 0.98) and 3.13 with a 95% CI (1.79 to 5.47) for the obstetrics and the gynecology departments. Conclusion: The performance of the pediatric branch was the only one compatible with the performance of the medicine branch. In contrast, both the surgery and gynecology branches significantly deviated from the medicine branch's performance. Further research is needed to pinpoint the causes of these performance deviations.