Selected predictors of junior doctor performance in their first postgraduate year: what matters most, their demographics, personal attributes, selection scores or academic performance?

This thesis explored the proposition that emotionally intelligent, female medical students, with high scores in UMAT section 2, who have performed well on measures of academic achievement will be better prepared for practice as junior doctors, as measured by the Western Australian Junior Doctor Assessment Tool in the first post graduate year.

This exploration has taken place through a series of publications representing interconnected mixed methods research projects utilising the same sample of medical students from one university as they moved through the last three years of their undergraduate medical course and during the first postgraduate year of practice as a doctor.

The proposition explored is partially supported with emotionally intelligent students who have performed well on measures of academic achievement obtaining higher performance scores as junior doctors when measured by the Junior Doctor Assessment Tool. These findings were further reflected in the participants’ supervisors’ qualitative ratings of performance in the first post graduate year.

This research supports the claim that the tools and processes being used to monitor and assess junior doctor performance need to be better addressed and adds to the growing body of knowledge that suggests assessment of academic performance in medical school is not always aligned with assessing generic graduate outcomes expected of the junior doctor in the workplace. The findings provide support to the value of combining undergraduate assessment scores to assess competence as a whole in predicting future performance as a junior doctor.