A study on early development of medical students' common competency in physiology teaching by case-based learning

Abstract

Objective This study discusses the role of casebased learning (CBL) in the development of common competency in medical students. Methods One hundred and twenty-one students of Grade 2013 and Grade 2014 majoring in clinical medicine were divided into study (Grade 2014: 63 students) and control (Grade 2013: 58 students) groups. The study group was composed of 5 teams, with 12 or 13 students in each team. CBL and traditional lecture-based learning (LBL) were applied to the study and the control groups respectively. After the courses, a questionnaire with 10 indicators of medical students' common competency was scored by the students. The scores were entered into SPSS 19.0 for two independent-samples ttest. Results The effective questionnaire recovery rates for the study and the control groups were 92.1% and 98.3% respectively. For the medical students' post competency index, students in the study group scored significantly higher than those in the control, with knowledge mastery, study interest, learning initiative, in-dependent learning, problem analyzing, problem solving showing the following scores, respectively: (5.57±0.77), (5.28±1.01), (5.16±0.91), (5.05±1.05), (5.10±0.89), and (5.09±1.01), compared to those in the control showing the following scores, respectively: (5.14±0.99), (4.82±1.12), (4.75±1.07), (4.46±1.09), (4.70±1.03), and (4.68±0.97), and the differences were statistically significant (P< 0.05). Besides, students in the study group performed much better in communication, collaboration, information collection, or critical thinking than those of the control (P<0.05), with scores in the study group showing (4.97±1.08), (5.33±0.94), (5.21±0.97), and (4.98±0.96),respectively and those in the control (3.93±1.16), (1.95±0.85), (2.21±0.98) and (2.12±0.91), respectively, and the differences had statistical significance. Conclusion CBL can promote the early development of medical students' common competency during basic medical education and compared to the traditional LBL, teaching in smaller teams is much better in ability training. Key words: Case-based learning; Basic medical education; Physiology; Common competency