Veränderungen von Parametern der Sprechstimme im Medizinstudium

Abstract

Medical education implies a process of socialization into the future role as a doctor. This socialization has the aim to develop a professional identity. Therefor young medicals learn how to demonstrate a confident and assertive behavior. An option to present self-confidence and assertiveness is the use of a loud voice. People evaluate people, who speak with a loud voice as professional, convincing and impressive. This study uses the relation between a loud voice and professionalism. We tested the hypothesis, that vocal loudness of fifth-year medical students is louder than vocal loudness of freshmen in medicine. Furthermore vocal loudness of medical students (freshman as well as fifth-year students) was compared with vocal loudness of same aged non-medical students. A cross sectional observation study with 206 students was performed (because of socio-demographic matching quasi longitudinal). The students were stratified in 4 different groups: freshmen in medicine (first semester), fifth-year medical students (≥9.Semester), freshmen in non-medical education (first semester), fifth-year non-medical students (≥9.Semester). The group of the non-medicals was built up of students from 21 different faculties. The target outcome of the study was the student's vocal loudness. Therefor each proband had to read aloud a standard text (‘Nordwind und Sonne’ = ‘Borealis and Sun’) and answer 3 interview questions. The vocal loudness was measured by the ‘lingWAVES’ sound level meter and the corresponding ‘lingWAVES’ software. For each vocal task an individual average voice loudness of the proband was calculated. In the final analysis of this study we used the averaged decibel value elicited by both tasks (freshmen in medicine: 64,4dB; fifth-year medical students: 66,3dB; freshmen in non-medical education: 65,2dB; fifth-year non-medical students: 64dB). Our hypothesis, that –in comparison to non-medical peers- the vocal loudness of medical students raises after five years of medical studies significan tly was testes in a 2-way analysis of variance. In this analysis the dependent variable was ‘vocal loudness’ and the two independent variables were ‘year of study’ (first vs. fifth year) and ‘field of study’ (medicine vs. non-medicine). The two independent variables individually were non-significant (‘year of study’: p=0,470; ‘field of study’: p=0,126) but the interaction (‘field of study’ x ‘year of study’) proved to be highly significant (p=0,001). Medical students learn - in contrast to non-medical students - to raise vocal loudness during education in medical school. The results give some measurable parameters for the development of a professional identity during medical education.