Medical students exchange program organized by Croatian Medical Students International Committee, 1996-2000.
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AIM: To assess the interest of Croatian medical students in going to foreign countries and foreign medical students' interest in coming to Croatia for one-month professional and research clerkship in the period from 1996 to 2000. METHOD: Data were obtained from contracts between Croatian Medical Students' International Committee and other National Member Organizations of the International Federation of Medical Students' Associations; from student Application forms; reports of the Local Committees of Croatian Medical Students' International Committee summed up in a Statistical form and used for statistical analysis in the International Federation of Medical Students' Associations; and from Cards of acceptance and Cards of confirmation. RESULTS: The number of available bilateral exchange places increased from 28 in 1996 to 66 in 1999. Croatian students going for clerkship abroad used 65.8% of available places and foreign students realized 59.3% of all places available in Croatia. Most of the exchange students chose clinical, whereas only a small number chose preclinical clerkship. The most visited were the departments of medicine and general surgery. All the students preferred doing their clerkships in August. Most foreign students came from Italy, Spain, Slovakia, and Hungary. Croatian students preferred to go to Italy, Spain, Egypt, and Finland. CONCLUSION: Political problems strongly affected students' interest in doing clerkship in a certain country. Croatia needs to attract more students from different countries and to increase the interest of Croatian students in doing clerkship in Eastern European countries. (+info)
Peer instruction improves performance on quizzes.
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Peer instruction is a cooperative-learning technique that promotes critical thinking, problem solving, and decision-making skills. Benson's think-pair-share and Mazur's peer-instruction techniques are simple cooperative exercises that promote student's participation in class and increase student's interaction with each other and with the instructor in a large classroom. We borrowed concepts from Benson and Mazur and applied these concepts to enhance student involvement during the respiratory component of the medical physiology class. The medical physiology class consisted of 256 first-year medical students. The peer-instruction technique was used for 10 classes. Each class of 50 min was divided into three or four short presentations of 12-20 min. Each presentation was followed by a one-question, multiple-choice quiz on the subject discussed. Questions ranged from simple recall to those testing complex intellectual activities. Students were given 1 min to think and to record their first answer. Subsequently, students were allowed 1 min to discuss their answers with their classmates and possibly correct their first response. The percentage of correct answers increased significantly (P < 0.05) after discussion for both recall and intellectual questions. These data demonstrate that pausing three to four times during a 50-min class to allow discussion of concepts enhanced the students level of understanding and ability to synthesize and integrate material. (+info)
The assessment of surgical skills and a simple knot-tying exercise.
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Basic surgical skills courses are mandatory for all surgical trainees taking the MRCS examination. An important aspect of these courses is the level of practical skill achieved by junior surgeons attending them. We present a simple knot-tying exercise, which may be used to assess the baseline skill level of trainees at the outset of the course and against which their progress can be judged after tuition and practice. (+info)
Collaboration between pharmacy and osteopathic medicine to teach via the Internet.
(60/2809)
This article describes the results of a survey from graduate pharmacy students who completed a neurology/psychiatry course taught by a pharmacist and an osteopathic physician via the Internet. Seventeen practicing pharmacists completed the 11-week course, and thirteen students completed the survey provided at the end of the course. Results indicated that students were pleased with the course. Mean evaluation scores ranged from 4.31 to 4.77 on a five-point scale. Additionally, students indicated that the collaboration of medicine and pharmacy provided an educational model that should be duplicated for future courses. (+info)
Testing osteopathic medical school graduates for licensure: is COMLEX-USA the most appropriate examination?
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Osteopathic and allopathic physicians receive authority to practice medicine through the licensing boards of the states in which they practice. Each state has the responsibility to operate a licensing board for physicians and other medical professionals. These boards choose which examinations are acceptable to establish that a physician is licensable to practice medicine. The National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners (NBOME) administers the Comprehensive Osteopathic Medical Licensing Examination (COMLEX-USA). To determine the views of the educational leaders of the osteopathic profession regarding licensure testing, a survey was mailed to leaders in the profession. Of the 799 surveys mailed, 341 (43%) were returned. Respondents were asked 19 questions, using a Likert scale to record responses (strongly disagree, 1; strongly agree, 5). Eighty-eight percent of respondents believed that osteopathic medicine is a distinct profession. Seventy percent of respondents felt that COMLEX-USA is the standard for testing osteopathic trainees, while 70% believed trainees should continue to be tested by a unique process. According to 72% of the respondents, the NBOME, through its testing procedures, continues to be the organization best suited to test the knowledge of osteopathic students and graduates. These results indicate that among the practicing leadership of the osteopathic profession, overwhelming support exists for the profession to retain the ability and the right to examine its own trainees from within. (+info)
Student performance and perceptions of a lecture-based course compared with the same course utilizing group discussion.
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BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Self-directed learning is believed to be an important aspect of the reflective clinical practitioner. This study was a comparison of student learning and student perceptions of course and instructor effectiveness, course difficulty, and amount learned between the active learning and lecture sections of a course. SUBJECTS: Participants in this study were 170 physical therapist students in 3 sections of a physiology course in the first year of their professional program. METHODS: Course grades and the results of teacher-course evaluations were compared between a lecture section and an active learning section. The students in the original active learning section were reassessed 1 year later to determine their perceptions of the course. The differences were analyzed using Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests. RESULTS: Course grades were higher in both active learning sections than in the lecture section. However, the students in both active learning sections perceived that they had learned less than students in the lecture section. Students' perceptions of course and instructor effectiveness were lower in the active learning sections than in the lecture section. There were no differences between the lecture and active learning sections on the students' perceptions of course difficulty. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION: Although they did better in the active learning environment, physical therapist students in a basic sciences course (physiology) in the first year of their professional program perceived that they had learned less in active learning courses. They also had lower perceptions of course and instructor quality. (+info)
Prediction of student performance on the Comprehensive Osteopathic Medical Licensing Examination Level I based on admission data and course performance.
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To predict student performance on the Comprehensive Osteopathic Medical Licensing Examination (COMLEX-USA) Level 1 examination based on academic performance during the first 2 years, stepwise regression analysis of COMLEX-USA Level 1 performance with preadmission grade point averages, Medical College Admission Test scores, and academic performance was performed on the class of 2000 to develop three formulae that were then used to predict performance on COMLEX-USA Level 1 for the class of 2001. Models ranged in accuracy of predicting the pass/fail status from 95.2% (all available data) to 96.8% (first-year grades and admissions data). A predictive model for student performance on COMLEX-USA Level 1 can be developed and has a high degree of accuracy. The model with the most variables available to choose from predicts the most failures. (+info)
Introduction of evidence-based medicine into an ambulatory clinical clerkship.
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Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has emerged has a critical clinical competency in the 21st century. Medical schools usually introduce students to critical appraisal in the preclinical years, but there have been few evaluated interventions in teaching EBM in the clinical years. We describe a strategy to encourage students to practice EBM during a required ambulatory medicine clerkship. During this clerkship, our students are required to submit an EBM report, which is prompted by an individual case, and structured with a 5-step approach. One small-group session is devoted to modeling this approach with a case of chest pain. Using a checklist to grade 216 consecutive EBM reports, we found that students were quite successful with the exercise, achieving on average 89.6% of possible checklist points. Students who followed the structure of the exercise closely were more likely to extend their discussions beyond that required and to suggest potential further areas of investigation or design. (+info)