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.

Aim 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.

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

Method 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%.

Conclusion 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.