Failed Examinees' Legal Challenge over the Clinical Skill Test in the Korean Medical Licensing Examination

The first trial of the clinical skill test for the 2009 Korean Medical Licensing Examination was completed without remarkable problems or mistakes. In this volume, a technical report by Dr. Kun Sang Kim, President of the National Health Personnel Licensing Examination Board (NHPLE) of Korea describes the introduction and administration of the clinical skill test [1]. However, afterward, 66 failed examinees filed a legal dispute. In February 2010, they sued the NHPLE to cancel their failure of the clinical skill test based on three justifications. First, there was variation in test item difficulty because the items were different for each group. Second, raters of the clinical performance examinations were standardized patients, not medical doctors like the objective structured clinical examination. Third, unlike the written test, there was no announcement on the passing criteria before the test [2]. Those three issues had already been taken into consideration and the NHPLE felt it had addressed them adequately by adopting the testing system of foreign countries where there is longer history of clinical skill testing than that of Korea. The judge is going to decide the case in early December 2010. The results of this case may influence further execution of Korea's clinical skill test.