gms | German Medical Science

GMS Journal for Medical Education

Gesellschaft für Medizinische Ausbildung (GMA)

ISSN 2366-5017

Basic training for clinical teachers within a structured emergency medicine course does not improve student’s performance in theoretical and practical assessment

Didaktisches Basistraining für einen strukturierten Notfallmedizin-Kurs verbessert nicht die theoretischen Kenntnisse und praktischen Fertigkeiten der Studierenden

Vortrag/Lecture

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  • corresponding author Jan Breckwoldt - Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Benjamin Franklin Medical Center, Berlin, Deutschland
  • author Jörg Svensson - Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Benjamin Franklin Medical Center, Berlin, Deutschland
  • author Alexander Brack - Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Benjamin Franklin Medical Center, Berlin, Deutschland

GMS Z Med Ausbild 2008;25(1):Doc16

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.egms.de/en/journals/zma/2008-25/zma000500.shtml

Received: November 2, 2007
Revised: November 6, 2007
Accepted: November 14, 2007
Published: February 15, 2008

© 2008 Breckwoldt et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.


Outline

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Objectives: Didactical training for clinical teachers is likely to improve the quality of their teaching sessions, especially for young clinical teachers. Uncertain is whether an effect of a didactical training could be observed on a highly structured emergency medicine course. As relevant outcome measure we decided on student’s performance during assessment after the course.

Methods: 16 clinical teachers (emergency medical physicians and anaesthesiologists, clinical experience 1 to 8 years) were matched as pairs concerning clinical experience and gender and then randomly assigned to didactical training of 20 hrs duration (group A) or to no training (group B). They taught emergency medicine to 3rd year medical students (n=211). Each group of students was exclusively taught by either group A or group B teachers. Course time was 13 hrs, the students – teacher ratio was 18 : 4 with a clearly defined structure of rotating skill stations and discussion groups. After the course student’s performance was assessed by short MCQ and SCE (structured clinical examination).

Results: 95 students with group A clinical teachers achieved a median of 71.4% (57-84%, 25.-75. percentile) correct answers in the MCQ, and a median of 76.7% (63-87%) in SCE. 99 students with group B teachers reached a median of 78.6% (64-86%) in the MCQ test, and 71,2% (59-85%) in the SCE. Statistical analysis revealed no significant difference for any of the tests.

Conclusion: Basic didactical training for clinical teachers within a structured emergency medicine course does not improve student’s performance in theoretical and practical assessment..