Medical education
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Comparative Study
Development of knowledge in basic sciences: a comparison of two medical curricula.
Basic medical sciences education differs among medicine courses, especially as traditional and integrated problem-based learning (PBL) curricula teach basic sciences in very different ways. The literature shows no clear differences in the performance of students of these different educational philosophies. The Charité Medical University of Berlin (Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin) teaches both a traditional medical curriculum (TMC) and a PBL reformed medical curriculum (RMC). Both curricula conduct the Progress Test in Medicine (PTM), which examines competence in the basic and clinical sciences from the first to the last semester. ⋯ Progress testing as a longitudinal method allows us to better understand the development of knowledge during formal undergraduate education. The main difference between traditional and problem-based medical education seems to be provoked by the high-stakes national examination undertaken in the traditional course (the Physikum).
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Simulation training has emerged as an effective way to complement clinical training of medical students. Yet outcomes from simulation training must be considered suboptimal when 25-30% of students fail to recognise a cardiac murmur on which they were trained 1 hour previously. There are several possible explanations for failure to improve following simulation training, which include the impact of heightened emotions on learning and cognitive overload caused by interactivity with high-fidelity simulators. This study was conducted to assess emotion during simulation training and to explore the relationships between emotion and cognitive load, and diagnostic performance. ⋯ We found that increased invigoration and reduced tranquillity during simulation training were associated with increased cognitive load, and that the likelihood of correctly identifying a trained murmur declined with increasing cognitive load. Further studies are needed to evaluate the impact on performance of strategies to alter emotion and cognitive load during simulation training.