GMS Journal for Medical Education最新文献

Aim: The aim of this study is to test and evaluate a one-time communication training session.

Methods: The focus of the evaluation is on the self-assessed communicative self-efficacy (SE-12) of students in the undergraduate degree programme in psychology before and after completing the communication training in the skills lab, during which simulated patients were used. The communication training was also evaluated by the students, and both positive feedback and suggestions for improvement were recorded. To do this, a quantitative study with a quasi-experimental design and a retrospective pre-post measurement (then-test) was conducted. The sample consists of 16 students in the undergraduate psychology programme at the SRH University of Applied Sciences Campus Gera (age: M=20.9, SD=1.7; 87.5% female). The available data was analysed descriptively and using t-tests.

Results: The results show that students who completed the communication training report significantly higher communicative self-efficacy than prior to the communication training (t(15)=-6.04, p<.001, d=.75). Furthermore, the students rated the communication training positively.

Conclusion: From the results, it can be concluded that simulation-based communication training can positively influence psychology students' communicative self-efficacy and that they rate the training positively. Communication training can be viewed as an important means to implement the mandated teaching of professionally relevant skills to psychology students in order to prepare them for professional participation in the labour market.

Objectives: Interprofessional education (IPE) seeks to promote interprofessional competencies among care providers, to help improve quality of care and patient safety. Interprofessional collaboration (IPC) and teamwork are particularly important in perinatal care. Therefore, we introduced SiGerinn (Safety and interprofessionality in perinatal care - Together and from the beginning), an interprofessional patient safety training for students in perinatal care. Here, we aim to present its concept and formative evaluation results.

Methods: The training programme designed for midwifery, nursing and medical students, focuses on IPC core competencies and safety communication techniques pertaining to perinatal care. It consists of two one-hour training sessions implemented in the setting of an inter-professional training ward in the local postpartum care unit of an academic university hospital. Additionally, skilled practice trainers supervised practical application of learning contents in the ward. Formative evaluation involved semi-structured interviews with practice trainers, focusing on relevance and feasibility.

Results: Practice trainers reported overall acceptance of the training content. High individual motivation was identified as a key success factor for implementing IPE and IPC. Leaders' support and structural feasibility were also identified as critical factors. The remaining challenges for future training adaptations need to be considered for sustainable transfer to safe perinatal care practice.

Conclusion: Our formative evaluation and preliminary experiences of SiGerinn revealed several critical success factors and barriers for IPE and IPC in perinatal care. We identified critical challenges and opportunities for future project refinement, serving as a blueprint for similar initiatives in perinatal care and beyond.

Introduction: Studying medicine places high demands on students' learning behavior. Nevertheless, most medical faculties in German-speaking countries do not offer curricular training for the acquisition of key learning skills. The aim of the project was to develop a series of workshops on evidence-based learning strategies, time and stress management.

Project description: The "study smart" workshop series was developed by students of the Mannheim Medical Faculty in 2018. Participants learn evidence-based techniques for long-term knowledge acquisition, self-, time- and stress management. Due to high demand, the workshop was subsequently incorporated as a permanent component of the curriculum. Since 2021, "study smart" has been a project of the German Medical Students' Association. Once yearly, students from other faculties are trained at a peer-training-weekend. In total, the workshop series was offered at 8 faculties and several times online. In 2021, a one-off survey of medical students was also conducted at the Medical Faculty Mannheim two months after the workshop series.

Results: A total of 68 workshop participants and 72 non-participants took part in the survey. This showed a more frequent use of the "active recall" learning strategy, in particular the "anki" flashcard program (14 (33%) of participants vs. 4 (10%) of non-participants; p=0.009). Participants reported creating Anki decks, which are shared with the entire class and revised together. In total, over 1000 medical students across Germany have participated in the workshop series over the past 5 years.

Discussion: Student interest in the workshop series remains high. Study Smart has become a widely utilized and highly regarded program. In the assessment of satisfaction with their own learning strategies, there was no significant difference between participants and non-participants. There are also challenges in the long-term implementation of the workshops at medical faculties at other universities due to a high turnover of peer teachers. The national project coordinator is therefore working on establishing local group networks.

Aim: The aim of the study was to develop a scoring rubric that provides valuable feedback to students and to gather evidence for its construct validity.

Methodology: The Magdeburg Reflective Writing Feedback and Scoring Rubric (MaReS) was developed in an iterative process following a symposium on reflection by a committee of the "DACH Association for Medical Education (GMA)" in June 2016. 25 essays written by 13 veterinary students were assessed by three independent raters with MaReS and by two raters with the REFLECT rubric in two runs (13 and twelve essays). Validity evidence was gathered referring to the following of Messick's components of construct validity: content (rubric development), response process (rater manual, rater training, rating time, students' evaluation), internal structure (inter-rater reliability, IRR), and relationship to other variables (comparison of the rating with the REFLECT rubric and a global rating scale).

Results: The analytic rubric comprises twelve items that are rated on three-point rating scales. The authors developed an assignment with guiding questions for students and a rater manual. Results for free marginal kappa of the items of MaReS ranged from -0.08 to 0.77 for the first set of reflective essays and from 0.13 to 0.75 for the second set. Correlations between MaReS and the REFLECT rubric were positive (first run: r=0.92 (p<0.001); second run: r=0.29 (p=0.37)).

Conclusion: MaReS might be a useful tool to guide students' reflective writing and provide structured feedback in health professions education. Using more essays for a rater training and more training cycles are likely to result in higher IRRs.

Objective: High expectations are placed on healthcare systems concerning safety and health restoration. Simultaneously, healthcare involves risks and potential hazards that may lead to adverse events for patients and healthcare professionals alike. To raise awareness of these risks, it is essential to incorporate the topic of patient safety into healthcare education. The room of horror, a form of simulated learning, represents an effective teaching and learning approach for this purpose.

Methods: At the end of their first semester, undergraduate nursing students participated in a room of horror exercise designed following the Swiss manual for interactive learning. The task involved identifying 13 errors relevant to patient safety within the room. Subsequently, the students provided written evaluations of this teaching format.

Results: Participants successfully identified twelve out of the thirteen safety-critical errors. All students perceived the simulation as educational and pertinent to professional practice. Heightened risk awareness and relevance to the professional context were particularly highlighted as positive outcomes.

Conclusion: The room of horror provides a practical simulation training environment where students can develop observational skills, critical thinking, and situational awareness regarding patient safety risks early in their clinical education.

This pilot study explored the use of an online escape room at RWTH Aachen University Hospital (UKA Escape) as an icebreaker. The game was developed for the introductory day of an international program aimed at teaching scientific skills in health professions education. The group activity in the online escape room was designed to provide an engaging introduction to the course and the subsequent learning group(s). Based on the story of a medical researcher and her team, who have developed a revolutionary serum, students must try to escape from the digital lab and save the serum. To this end, the students worked in five small groups to solve science-related puzzles. An interactive and synchronous collaboration was facilitated despite physical distance using a video conferencing tool. The usability of the digital escape room was rated in the fourth quartile (system usability scale score of M=81.25). In line with the questionnaire-based feedback, students' qualitative feedback was predominantly positive, with indications of areas for improvement. Overall, the results indicate that the students greatly appreciated the online escape room and that teamwork was encouraged, demonstrating the potential of escape rooms in health professions education.

Objective: Trained student tutors instruct medical and dentistry students in the methodology of structured intraoral diagnosis, the identification of common oral pathologies, and the fundamental treatment concepts. The objective of this study is to assess the feasibility and efficacy of a peer teaching-based interdisciplinary tutorial and a training program for tutors designed for this purpose.

Methods: The present study describes the feasibility, evaluation, and implementation of an interdisciplinary tutorial for medical and dental students at the University Medical Center Göttingen. The development of tutorial contents, monitored by experts, and structured training of the tutors formed the foundation for the implementation of the tutorial. The concepts for the tutor training and the tutorial were evaluated by the participants. The efficacy of the tutorial in enhancing the participants' clinical skills was assessed through analysis of their performance in a mini-clinical evaluation exercise on intraoral diagnosis and a mini-quiz comprising nine questions.

Results: The structured training program enabled tutors to enhance their theoretical and practical abilities, as well as their educational competencies. The peer teaching tutorial, conducted in accordance with the training program, facilitated the advancement of the participating students' clinical knowledge and practical skills.

Conclusion: The interdisciplinary student tutorial equipped medical and dentistry students with pertinent interdisciplinary competencies drawn from the medical and dental learning objectives catalogues on oral health topics, thereby raising awareness of their future relevance in the context of medical and dental practice. Both the student tutors and the students participating in the tutorial benefited from the educational approaches delineated as part of the study. Other medical skills laboratory teams may use and adapt these approaches.

Objectives: A strategy-based evaluation of new teaching or examination formats is recommended in order to check their suitability before a possible integration into a medical curriculum. The aim of the project was to evaluate an established formative competence- and simulation-based examination format for medical students in a standardized way.

Project description: In a realistic simulation of a first working day in hospital, medical students at the end of their studies were given the opportunity to test their medical competences and to develop them further on the basis of self-assessment and feedback. In the years 2020 to 2023, a total of 879 students participated. This included 707 students in their final year (PJ) and 172 students before their PJ. The simulation format was evaluated in a standardized manner based on the Stanford criteria for evaluating clinical teaching. The free text comments were analyzed by content using MAXQDA.

Results: The quality of the training, the practical learning content and aspects of the individual training phases are the most important areas of the student evaluation. The learning atmosphere, the leadership and the assessments and feedback received are described positively. There are also clear indications that the simulation format promotes understanding and retention and supports self-directed learning well. Overall, participants gave the teaching format an average school grade of 1.26±.45. Some evaluation results have already been implemented in the adaptation of the simulation.

Conclusion: The integration of the simulation format into medical curricula can be recommended on the basis of this evaluation. Further development of the format is also possible.

Introduction: In the context of the shortage of physicians, the practical year is an important component in the acquisition of future medical talent. Previous studies suggest that PJ students rate several satisfaction parameters significantly lower in the surgical term than in other terms. Poor perceptions of surgical topics may lead to a health care problem. The aim of the current study was to analyse in detail the specific comparison between compulsory surgical and other elective surgical terms.

Methods: 7762 anonymous online PJ evaluations at the Medical Faculty of Münster from 2007-2020 (RR 60.6%) were retrospectively analysed. The elective subjects were divided into operative and conservative subjects. In particular, evaluations and subjective learning gains were compared.

Results: On the one hand, this study confirmed that the mandatory subject surgery was rated significantly worse than the other tertials (M_surg=69,3, M_Int=76,7, M_elec=84,6; p<0,001). Among the elective subjects, the conservative subjects were also preferred and rated better than the operative subjects (30,7% vs. 69,3%; M_op=85,9, M_kons=81,8; p<0,001). A final comparison of the elective operative subjects and the compulsory surgical terms showed that the elective operative subjects were also rated sig. better than the compulsory surgical term (M_surg=69,3, M_op=85,9; p<0,001).

Discussion: The compulsory surgical specialty was found to be deficient in student autonomy and supervision, which may explain the worsening recruitment problem. In order to improve the attractiveness of surgical training, a compulsory surgical elective could be introduced, where students could learn the core competencies in smaller units. This enhancement could increase the interest of future medical professionals in surgical training.

Background: Medical teaching uses medical comics, which are combinations of images and text that depict content from everyday life in the healthcare sector. Over- or under-representation of certain people in certain roles can convey subject-specific role models and stereotypes that can influence individual training pathways. This study examines the proportion of genders and people of colour represented in comic characters, the professional roles to which they can be assigned, and the share of speech they are given.

Method: The analysis included 995 German-language comics from anthologies and textbook series, with 2688 depicted characters from the period between 2002 and 2019. Criteria for categorizing roles, read gender and people of color were developed iteratively. The evaluation was carried out in a descriptive manner.

Results: In the overall evaluation, the quantitatively dominant read gender was male in the roles examined (55%-88%), with especially high representation in the physician's role (88%). Only the nursing staff were predominantly female (75%). The proportion of people of color in the roles analyzed was negligible (0-2%). The share of speech did not differ.

Discussion: Medical comics used in teaching should have a balanced gender ratio, consciously depict people of color and take demographic conditions into account. This should help to create an environment in which students base their career choices on their personal skills and goals rather than on aspects such as gender or identity as people of color.