摘要：On January 26, 2022, United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 Examination (Step 1) scores will be reported as pass or fail, as the test was initially designed. This decision was made thoughtfully and with broad input from stakeholder organizations as part of the Invitational Conference on USMLE Scoring (InCUS).1 Family medicine (FM) educators should celebrate this change. The unintended consequences overemphasizing Step 1 have been well described for both faculty2 and students.3 The current use of Step 1 as a filter for graduate medical education (GME) applications is a poor predictor of clinical performance,4,5 perpetuates structural inequities by race and gender,5,6 and negatively impacts student well-being by shifting attention away from institutional undergraduate medical education (UME) performance and extracurricular activities including service and research.3 Finally, there is reason to suspect there will be positive implications of this change concerning FM specialty choice. Chen et al describe how students choosing to specialize in primary care are often assumed to have lower examination scores and students with high Step 1 scores are commonly encouraged to apply to more competitive specialties.
