Integrating climate change and health topics into the medical curriculum - a quantitative needs assessment of medical students at Heidelberg University in Germany.
{"title":"Integrating climate change and health topics into the medical curriculum - a quantitative needs assessment of medical students at Heidelberg University in Germany.","authors":"Leonie Rybol, Jessica Nieder, Dorothee Amelung, Hafsah Hachad, Rainer Sauerborn, Anneliese Depoux, Alina Herrmann","doi":"10.3205/zma001618","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>Climate change (CC) is of major importance for physicians as they are directly confronted with changing disease patterns, work in a greenhouse gas intensive sector and can be potential advocates for healthy people on a healthy planet.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We assessed third to fifth year medical students' needs to support the integration of CC topics into medical curricula. A questionnaire with 54 single choice-based items was newly designed with the following sections: role perception, knowledge test, learning needs, preference of educational strategies and demographic characteristics. It was administered online to students at Heidelberg medical faculty. Data sets were used for descriptive statistics and regression modelling.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>72.4% of students (N=170, 56.2% female, 76% aged 20-24 years) (strongly) agreed that physicians carry a responsibility to address CC in their work setting while only 4.7% (strongly) agreed that their current medical training had given them enough skills to do so. Knowledge was high in the area of CC, health impacts of CC, vulnerabilities and adaptation (70.1% correct answers). Knowledge gaps were greatest for health co-benefits and climate-friendly healthcare (55.5% and 16.7% of correct answers, respectively). 79.4% wanted to see CC and health included in the medical curriculum with a preference for integration into existing mandatory courses. A multilinear regression model with factors age, gender, semester, aspired work setting, political leaning, role perception and knowledge explained 45.9% of variance for learning needs.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>The presented results encourage the integration of CC and health topics including health co-benefits and climate-friendly healthcare, as well as respective professional role development into existing mandatory courses of the medical curriculum.</p>","PeriodicalId":45850,"journal":{"name":"GMS Journal for Medical Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10291352/pdf/","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"GMS Journal for Medical Education","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3205/zma001618","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"EDUCATION, SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Objectives: Climate change (CC) is of major importance for physicians as they are directly confronted with changing disease patterns, work in a greenhouse gas intensive sector and can be potential advocates for healthy people on a healthy planet.
Methods: We assessed third to fifth year medical students' needs to support the integration of CC topics into medical curricula. A questionnaire with 54 single choice-based items was newly designed with the following sections: role perception, knowledge test, learning needs, preference of educational strategies and demographic characteristics. It was administered online to students at Heidelberg medical faculty. Data sets were used for descriptive statistics and regression modelling.
Results: 72.4% of students (N=170, 56.2% female, 76% aged 20-24 years) (strongly) agreed that physicians carry a responsibility to address CC in their work setting while only 4.7% (strongly) agreed that their current medical training had given them enough skills to do so. Knowledge was high in the area of CC, health impacts of CC, vulnerabilities and adaptation (70.1% correct answers). Knowledge gaps were greatest for health co-benefits and climate-friendly healthcare (55.5% and 16.7% of correct answers, respectively). 79.4% wanted to see CC and health included in the medical curriculum with a preference for integration into existing mandatory courses. A multilinear regression model with factors age, gender, semester, aspired work setting, political leaning, role perception and knowledge explained 45.9% of variance for learning needs.
Conclusion: The presented results encourage the integration of CC and health topics including health co-benefits and climate-friendly healthcare, as well as respective professional role development into existing mandatory courses of the medical curriculum.
期刊介绍:
GMS Journal for Medical Education (GMS J Med Educ) – formerly GMS Zeitschrift für Medizinische Ausbildung – publishes scientific articles on all aspects of undergraduate and graduate education in medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy and other health professions. Research and review articles, project reports, short communications as well as discussion papers and comments may be submitted. There is a special focus on empirical studies which are methodologically sound and lead to results that are relevant beyond the respective institution, profession or country. Please feel free to submit qualitative as well as quantitative studies. We especially welcome submissions by students. It is the mission of GMS Journal for Medical Education to contribute to furthering scientific knowledge in the German-speaking countries as well as internationally and thus to foster the improvement of teaching and learning and to build an evidence base for undergraduate and graduate education. To this end, the journal has set up an editorial board with international experts. All manuscripts submitted are subjected to a clearly structured peer review process. All articles are published bilingually in English and German and are available with unrestricted open access. Thus, GMS Journal for Medical Education is available to a broad international readership. GMS Journal for Medical Education is published as an unrestricted open access journal with at least four issues per year. In addition, special issues on current topics in medical education research are also published. Until 2015 the journal was published under its German name GMS Zeitschrift für Medizinische Ausbildung. By changing its name to GMS Journal for Medical Education, we wish to underline our international mission.