Learning preferences of emergency medicine residents: Does context matter?

Abstract

Background Delivery of education varies between Emergency Medicine (EM) residencies. EM requires residents to be trained in three domains of foundational knowledge: pathophysiology, procedure skills, and clinical reasoning. The “Visual, Auditory, Read, and Kinesthetics” (VARK) learning model has been studied previously in the medical professions. These methods pertain to viewing material, listening to content, reading or writing content and to performing activities, respectively. EM residents may prefer different VARK methods, and furthermore their preferences may change depending on the foundational knowledge domain to be learned. Methods In a multi-site survey-based study, 90 EM residents of various post-graduate year (PGY) levels completed a 30-question questionnaire on SurveyMonkey™ about their learning preferences of the foundational knowledge based on the VARK learning model. Demographic information was obtained. Data was analyzed via a Kruskal-Wallis test and followed by post-hoc analyses for statistical significance. Results For clinical knowledge questions, EM residents favored Kinesthetics, followed closely by Vision (p = 0.0010). For pathophysiology, they overwhelmingly favored Vision over other learning methods (p <.0001). For procedure questions, they preferred Vision, followed closely by Kinesthetics (p <.0001). PGY1 residents had a higher preference for Kinesthetic (p = 0.0198) and PGY3-4 residents had a slightly higher preference for Read and Vision learning methods (Read p = 0.0234, Vision p = 0.0131). These results are statistically significant. There was no significant difference between residents of different genders in learning preferences. Conclusion Emergency medicine residents may prefer different learning methods depending on the content of material being learned. A relatively small sample size is a limitation of the study. Future studies could investigate if tailoring educational delivery to residents’ preferences may improve outcomes.