The ways to improve the educational process while studying medical chemistry in modern conditions

Abstract

Annotation. Ukraine's entry into the world community is impossible without the modernization of the higher education system aimed to train specialists at the level of international requirements. The purpose of this research was to uncover the potential of the medical chemistry subject for the development of the medical student's personality, the acquisition of practical skills, and the formation of the chemical competence of the future doctors by improving the educational process. In 2019–2020 the new scheme of conducting workshops on certain topics of the discipline “Medical Chemistry” was proposed that involved combining two related workshops in a way that the first class would be purely theoretical and the second would give students practical skills on the topic. It was tested on 450 first-year medical students. The effectiveness of the application of the new method of workshops was evaluated on the basis of comparison of indices of differential credit in medical chemistry (absolute and qualitative success, average mark). Student's parametric t-test was used to estimate the intergroup difference, while at the same time the frequency of the change was estimated by the F Fisher criterion. The methodology presented in the research provides the means of improvement of skills and knowledge of the discipline “Medical Chemistry”, forms students’ interest to the subjects, ensures better learning of theoretical content, skills in usage of chemical vessels and equipment, critical thinking, evaluating the results obtained and making conclusions. Use of proposed learning scheme in 2019–2020 statistically did not show significant difference in the grades of students, who study a discipline “Medical Chemistry” compared to normal learning process. On the other hand, it recorded statistically reliable increase of 14,2% in the absolute grades of 1st year students compared to 2018–2019 results, which demonstrates the potential of its use in an educational process.