UC Irvine

Background

The standardized letter of evaluation (SLOE) was developed to make letters of recommendation in emergency medicine (EM) more objective and discerning. Typically, students obtain one SLOE from a home EM rotation and at least one more SLOE from an away clerkship. It is unclear if students perform better on their home or away EM rotations.

Objective

The purpose of this study was to determine if students perform better on the group SLOE at their home institution compared to an away institution.

Methods

The authors performed a retrospective application review of all allopathic applicants to an urban, academic EM residency program. The authors calculated a composite score (CS) for each group SLOE, using the global assessment scores for comparative rank and rank list position. A lower CS indicates better performance. The authors compared mean CS for students' first home rotations with first away rotations. For students in the study who had a third (second away or second home site) SLOE available, the authors compared mean CS on the students' first SLOEs with mean CS on the students' third SLOEs.

Results

A total of 624 records were included in the primary analysis. There was a small, but significant difference between mean CS for students' home rotations when compared to away rotations (4.67 vs. 4.85, p = 0.024). Students performed better on their home rotations. Students who had three SLOEs available performed worse on their third rotation (first = 4.40, second = 4.63, third = 4.77, p = 0.012 for first vs. third). For all available SLOEs, more than 50% of students fell into the top 10% or top one-third categories.

Conclusion

Students perform slightly better on their home EM rotations. Students' mean SLOE CS is slightly worse for a third rotation when compared to a first rotation.