Endocrine Abstracts

Background: This project endeavoured to improve the quality of endocrinology teaching to clinical medical students through the use of a new multi-stage process.

Methods: We created a co-ordinated block containing 4-h teaching sessions (4×1 h) in which eight students in their first clinical year presented answers to questions based on clinical endocrinology cases they had seen and selected. The process started with identification of cases in the out-patient clinic, followed by self-directed learning, and presentation to the student group. A Consultant Endocrinologist assisted with deciding on one key clinical question per case and gave a real-time reflection to students’ following each session A typical example was to find out reasons why a 34-year-old patient with Graves’ disease, might undergo remission during pregnancy, and then relapse post-partum. The teaching was assessed using validated feedback using measures, co-ordinated by an objective facilitator; with quantifiable results that could be compared to other endocrine teaching and the overall student module.

Results: As a collective dataset – with all answers ranked at levels from 1 to 5, the overall total response score (of n=120) was 91/120, or 75.8%. This is better than the associated response for the endocrinology teaching overall (67.7%), which included other teaching styles. In addition it improved on average positive ratings (70%) than the mean for the module as a whole (55%). Therefore, not only was the new style of teaching rated higher than other clinical rotations, it was a preferred style within the speciality.

Discussion: Our novel method, as evidenced by feedback, resulted in greater interest and motivation to learn, and a greater understanding of how to devise and answer clinical questions, facilitating deep learning. Increased confidence in the key skill of presenting clinical cases was a further positive outcome to this project.