What is the Enhanced COMLEX-USA?

The COMLEX-USA, the licensure examination for osteopathic medical students, has transitioned to a contemporary, two-decision point, competency-based COMLEX-USA blueprint and evidence-based design informed by extensive research on actual osteopathic physician practice, expert consensus, and stakeholder surveys.

The new COMLEX-USA assesses representative measurable outcomes of the seven competency domains and focused on high-frequency clinical presentations or high-impact health issues and clinical presentations that affect patients across the lifespan.

Implementation

The new COMLEX-USA Master Blueprint began with Level 3 in September 2018. New Blueprint specifications for  Level 1, Level 2-CE and Level 2-PE, were implemented with their new test cycles beginning in 2019.

Two Distinct Dimensions

The assessment focuses on two dimensions that continue to integrate:

• Osteopathic philosophy of whole person health care
• Underlying structure-function relationships
• Interdependence of body systems
• Self-healing and self-regulatory mechanisms, and
• Osteopathic approach to patient care, including osteopathic manipulative medicine and OMT

It features a framework that maps content to competency domains and clinical presentations.

Dimension 1 of the blueprint consists of seven competency domains—related sets of foundational abilities representing the required elements and outcomes that define the knowledge, skills, experience, attitudes, values, behaviors, and established professional standards.

Dimension 2 of the blueprint consists of the 10 clinical presentations, which represent the manner in which a particular patient, group of patients, or a community present(s) for osteopathic medical care.