Abstract
IntroductionUndergraduate medical education has evolved necessarily with the increasing utilization of technology and the availability of ancillary resources developed for medical students. However, medical educational resources are expensive and there have been few studies validating these resources for their ability to significantly modify student exam performance.MethodsA post-exam survey was devised to evaluate medical students for resource usage, student-perceived preparedness, and exam performance.ResultsStudents who felt more prepared for exams performed better than students who felt less prepared (p = .017). Students who watched didactic lectures online and those who utilized peer-to-peer tutoring outperformed students who did not use these resources (p = .035, p = .008). Analyses of the data show that none of the purchased resources utilized significantly improved student exam performance. The majority of students used between six and eight resources for exam preparation. There may be a slightly negative association with the quantity of resources used and exam scores (p = .18).DiscussionContrary to traditional confidence studies that correlate overconfidence with underperformance, medical students who reported feeling more prepared for exams performed better than students who felt less prepared.ConclusionMedical students may have a more complete grasp of their knowledge base and deficits, which may enable a more accurate match between exam expectations and academic performance. This post-exam survey method can be customized and applied to evaluate resource utility as it pertains to specific undergraduate medical education curricula at individual institutions.
Highlights
Undergraduate medical education has evolved necessarily with the increasing utilization of technology and the availability of ancillary resources developed for medical students
We developed an anonymous post-exam survey that assessed for the following components: 1. A “Preparedness Score” (PS), which asked students how prepared they felt about their exam performance on a scale of 1 to 10; 2
Determining if certain resources lead to scholastic improvements is critical to refining a developing medical curriculum, and our assessment of medical student resource utilization on academic results is an attempt to better understand the overall effectiveness of these resources
Summary
Undergraduate medical education has evolved necessarily with the increasing utilization of technology and the availability of ancillary resources developed for medical students. Conclusion Medical students may have a more complete grasp of their knowledge base and deficits, which may enable a more accurate match between exam expectations and academic performance. This post-exam survey method can be customized and applied to evaluate resource utility as it pertains to specific undergraduate medical education curricula at individual institutions. With the current rate at which medical knowledge is updated, it is crucial to ensure that future physicians are comfortable synthesizing and applying new evidence as it unfolds This has been observed in the recent transition to a “competency-based” approach where students are taught to seek out and apply new information readily [3]. The exponential growth in availability of online medical educational resources over the past decade has placed the onus primarily on medical students to ascertain which is the most effective method of knowledge acquisition outside of their formal curriculums [2, 4]
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