Endocrine Abstracts

Background: There has been little research into methods of learning clinical endocrinology, a speciality encompassing rare conditions and pattern recognition. Problems include limited patient exposure outside specialist centres and increasing pressure on doctors to manage their own educational needs. An understanding of learning methods in use across the spectrum of students and doctors will help to identify trusted resources and untapped techniques.

Aim: Pilot study to identify the usefulness of different learning resources employed by students and doctors currently engaged in endocrine practice.

Method: Participants completed a paper/online questionnaire indicating perceived usefulness of educational resources they had encountered. This was a prospective study using convenience sampling.

Results: 77 responses were obtained: 57 third-year and 4 final-year students on endocrine placements, three foundation/CMT doctors, five registrars and 8 consultants. Lectures and textbooks were useful across all groups; but patient encounters were perceived as most helpful (100.0% of final year students and above). With increasing seniority, perceived usefulness of journals increased (25% of 3rd-year students, 50.0% of final-year students and 100% of registrars/consultants). Wikipedia was commonly-used by students (86.7% of 3rd-years found it helpful; 62.5% of consultants had never used it). Except for registrars (60% of whom found them useful), most participants had never used e-learning resources. 6.5% of participants had used podcasts and 26.0% had used apps for endocrine learning. Students are willing to use e-learning/podcasts if directed to these resources.

Discussion: Traditional resources and patient encounters remain important for learning. E-learning, apps and podcasts are relatively unexploited tools. Perceived usefulness is a helpful starting point for design and evaluation of grade-specific resources. Developing ‘virtual patients’ may benefit students and trainees, whilst senior physicians may value podcasts as a bite-sized method of delivering clinical developments. These will require evaluation for quality of learning as well as ease of use and popularity.