gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: Clinical Bedside Teaching plays a crucial role in the education of young physicians. Commonly, these courses are a major opportunity for medical students to learn and improve clinical skills as history taking and physical examination. Due to the fact that students tend to spend fewer time at patient’s bedside, it is of even greater importance to exploit the time effectively. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether structured improvement measures in Bedside Teaching would enhance the student’s performance with respect to clinical skills.

Methods: During a Bedside Teaching Course for Internal Medicine at the Technical University of Munich students as well as teaching physicians had the chance to evaluate the performance of the students‘ clinical skills. Grades according to the German grading system (1-6; 1: best; 2: worst) were given in an online questionaire in the categories „history taking & physical examination“, „diagnosis“, „therapy“. After two of the four semesters of the study, improvement measures such as E-Learning cases, a script as well as a structured briefing for lecturers were implemented in the course.

Results: Within every semester the self-evaluation of the students improved significantly when comparing the first (6 appointments) and second half (6 appointments) of the courses. This effect could partly be confirmed by the lecturer’s evaluation. Significant improvements in the self-evaluation of the students could be seen in two of three categories („history taking & physical examination“: p=0,000, „diagnosis“: p=0,000, „therapy“: p=0,010). From the physician teachers’ perspective the improvement of the first two semesters compared to the last two semesters were significant in the categories „diagnosis“ (p=0,028) and „therapy“ (p=0,000).

Discussion: Improvement measures such as E-Learning cases, a script and a briefing for physician teachers had significant effects on learning clinical skills. The student’s self-evaluation improved significantly, whereas these improvements in clinical skills can only partly be observed by the lecturers.