Enhancing Medical Students Research Articles

Bridging the Gap : A Program to Enhance Medical Students’ Learning Experience in the Foundation Year

Method: A Twenty-seven-item questionnaire was administered to foundation year students at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland – Medical University of Bahrain (RCSI Bahrain) after the completion of the first semester to explore whether these interventions enriched the students’ learning experience or not. Comparisons of pass rates in all modules over the four years were also included. Students’ perceptions of the academic study skills course were collected through a questionnaire activity (version 2007120102) via the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

Rural Ethics Ward Rounds: Enhancing medical students' ethical awareness in rural medicine

<scp>R</scp>ural <scp>E</scp>thics <scp>W</scp>ard <scp>R</scp>ounds: Enhancing medical students' ethical awareness in rural medicine

Enhancing medical students' communication skills: development and evaluation of an undergraduate training program

BackgroundThere is a relative lack of current research on the effects of specific communication training offered at the beginning of the medical degree program. The newly developed communication training "Basics and Practice in Communication Skills" was pilot tested in 2008 and expanded in the following year at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany. The goal was to promote and improve the communicative skills of participants and show the usefulness of an early offered intervention on patient-physician communication within the medical curriculum.MethodsThe students participating in the project and a comparison group of students from the standard degree program were surveyed at the beginning and end of the courses. The survey consisted of a self-assessment of their skills as well as a standardised expert rating and an evaluation of the modules by means of a questionnaire.ResultsStudents who attended the communication skills course exhibited a considerable increase of communication skills in this newly developed training. It was also observed that students in the intervention group had a greater degree of self-assessed competence following training than the medical students in the comparison group. This finding is also reflected in the results from a standardised objective measure.ConclusionsThe empirical results of the study showed that the training enabled students to acquire specialised competence in communication through the course of a newly developed training program. These findings will be used to establish new communication training at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf.

Research and practice of permeating the humanity quality education into pharmacology teaching

Enhancing medical students' humane quality education is an urgent requirement for modem medical mode transformation for medical education.The pharmacology teachers of Chongqing Medical University follow the modem education concepts and fully search the human spirit materials hidden in pharmacology,then actively explore how to integrate the humanity spirit education into the pharmacology teaching to achieve the changes of from exam-oriented education to quality education. Key words: Pharmacology teaching; Humanity spirit quality education; Medical students

Sexual Health of Dutch Medical Students: Nothing to Worry about

Little is known about the sexual lives and development of medical students because of relatively small sample sizes and, in particular, low response rates in research. Enhancing medical students' awareness and understanding of sexual behavior is imperative, as gaps in knowledge might impede effective sexual health consultations in their later professional practice. The aim of this study was to provide insight into the sexual lives and development of medical students. The main outcome measures of this study are demographic, contextual, and sexual data based on validated surveys. Preclinical medical students aged under 26 years were approached during scheduled classes and by e-mail to complete a web-based questionnaire. Our results were compared with international and Dutch normative data. Ordinal regression analysis and Pearson's correlation analysis were used to assess relationships between variables. A total of 1,598 questionnaires were returned (response rate 52%: 1,198 by women, 400 by men). There were 719 first-year students (mean age 19.17 years) and 879 third-year students (mean age 21.5 years). Gender distribution differences were seen in all the cohorts and were corrected for. Compared with international and Dutch (88%) normative data, our first- (62.7%; P<0.001) and third-year (79.9%; P=0.018) medical students had less sexual experience and showed different advancements in sexual behavior. However, these differences decreased, which suggests that medical students "catch-up" as their age increases. Sexual behavior in our sample did not differ from international data, except for a strikingly high sexual satisfaction (80%). We also confirmed that social and environmental characteristics change with alterations in sexual behavior. Although contraceptive measures were used more frequently (98%; P=0.006), sexually transmitted diseases were more common (4.6%; P=0.008), which suggests inappropriate use of protective measures. Independent predictive determinants for protective sexual behavior were the form of relationship (P<0.001; OR=1.97) and sexual orientation (P=0.009; odds ratio=2.26). These data provide insight into the sexuality of medical students. The results of this study reliably clarify previous findings and form a solid basis for further research.

Enhancing medical students’ conceptions of the CanMEDS Health Advocate Role through international service-learning and critical reflection: A phenomenological study

Background: Medical students are expressing increasing interest in international experiences in low-income countries where there are pronounced inequities in health and socio-economic development.Aim: We carried out a detailed exploration of the international service-learning (ISL) experience of three medical students and the value of critical reflection as a pedagogical approach to enhance medical students’ conceptions of the Canadian Medical Education Directions for Specialists (CanMEDS) Health Advocate Role.Method: A phenomenological approach enabled us to study in considerable depth the students’ experience from their perspective. Students kept reflective journals and wrote essays including detailed accounts of their experiences. The content of the students’ journals and essays was analyzed using the critical incident technique.Results: Students noted an increasingly meaningful sense of what it means to be vulnerable and marginalized, a heightened level of awareness of the social determinants of health and the related importance of community engagement, and a deeper appreciation of the health advocate role and key concepts embedded within it.Conclusion: This in-depth phenomenological study focused on the detailed experiences of three students from whom we learned that social justice-oriented approaches to service-learning, coupled with critical reflection, provide potentially viable pedagogical approaches for learning the health advocate role. How this experience will affect the students’ future medical practice is yet unknown.