Assessing impact of not attending lectures on osteopathic medical student performance: Brief survey of the literature and proposed future research

It has been anecdotally reported that osteopathic medical students often decrease their attendance of didactic lectures to increase time to study for the Comprehensive Osteopathic Medical Licensing Examination of the United States (COMLEX-USA). There is no strong evidence supporting the impact of attending vs. not attending didactic lectures on osteopathic medical student performance in courses during the first two years of osteopathic medical education. This paper provides a brief survey of the literature. The paper also presents a proposal for future research to assess the impact of not attending didactic lectures on student performance. The proposed study would provide needed evidence toward answering this question in the osteopathic medical school environment.