Analysis of biophysical knowledge of medical and urgent health care students at the beginning of their studies

Abstract

The biophysics is included into beginning of University studies of medical and non-medical study programs as basic subject for other theoretical and (pre)clinical subjects. It is generally considered as difficult subject. The aim of our study was: 1. To find out whether students are able to use high school physical knowledge for solving problem tasks focused on medical topics. 2. To find out whether level of physical knowledge acquired on high school affect student’s ability to solve simple model tasks from medical practice. There were 177 the 1st and the 2nd year students of Health Care study program and 271 the 1st year students of medical study program solving original didactic test. The first part was focused on problem solving task with medical topic. The second part included classic physics tasks. Both parts of test were possible to solve using similar physical high school knowledge. We find out that students’ problem is to apply knowledge of high school physics to solve problem tasks from practice. Although between both student groups were showed statistically significant differences in classical physics knowledge (p < 0.001), there was not significant differences in overall success of students in solving applied tasks (p = 0.1).The biophysics is included into beginning of University studies of medical and non-medical study programs as basic subject for other theoretical and (pre)clinical subjects. It is generally considered as difficult subject. The aim of our study was: 1. To find out whether students are able to use high school physical knowledge for solving problem tasks focused on medical topics. 2. To find out whether level of physical knowledge acquired on high school affect student’s ability to solve simple model tasks from medical practice. There were 177 the 1st and the 2nd year students of Health Care study program and 271 the 1st year students of medical study program solving original didactic test. The first part was focused on problem solving task with medical topic. The second part included classic physics tasks. Both parts of test were possible to solve using similar physical high school knowledge. We find out that students’ problem is to apply knowledge of high school physics to solve problem tasks from practice....