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Background Gamification is an increasingly common phenomenon in education. It is a technique to facilitate formative assessment and to promote student learning. It has been shown to be more effective than traditional methods. This phenomenological study was conducted to explore the advantages of gamification through the use of the Kahoot! platform for formative assessment in medical education. Methods This study employed a phenomenological design. Five focus groups were conducted with medical students who had participated in several Kahoot! sessions. Results Thirty-six categories and nine sub-themes emerged from the focus group discussions. They were grouped into three themes: attractive learning tool, learning guidance and source of motivation. Conclusions The results suggest that Kahoot! sessions motivate students to study, to determine the subject matter that needs to be studied and to be aware of what they have learned. Thus, the platform is a promising tool for formative assessment in medical education. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12909-019-1658-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Aims:To evaluate the self-perceived preparedness of final-year dental undergraduate students in dental public universities in Malaysia. Methods:Final-year dental undergraduate students from six dental public universities in Malaysia were invited to participate in an online study using a validated DentalUndergraduates Preparedness Assessment Scale DU-PAS. Results:In total, about 245 students responded to the online questionnaire yielding a response rate of 83.05%. The age range of the respondents was 23-29 years with a mean age of 24.36 (SD 0.797). The total score obtained by the respondents was ranged from 48 to 100 with a mean score of 79.56 (SD 13.495). Weaknesses were reported in several clinical skills, cognitive and behavioural attributes.

Objectives Community-based education (CBE) has an impact on the types of medical students produced at the end of medical training. However, its impact on professional identity development (PID) has not been clearly understood. This study thus explores the effect of the CBE program on PID. Methods A qualitative phenomenological study was conducted on a group of Universiti Sains Malaysia medical students who had finished the Community and Family Case Study (CFCS) program. Data were gathered through focused group discussions and student reflective journals. Participants were sampled using the maximal variation technique of purposive sampling. Three steps of thematic analysis using the Atlasti software were employed to identify categories, subthemes, and themes. Results Personal, role, social, and research identities were generated that contribute to the PID of medical students through the CFCS program. The results indicate that the CFCS program nurtured personal identity through the development of professional skills, soft skills, and personal values. Pertaining to role identity, this is related to patient care in terms of primary care and interprofessional awareness. Pertaining to social identity, the obvious feature was community awareness related to culture, society, and politics. A positive outcome of the CFCS program was found to be its fostering of research skills, which is related to the use of epidemiology and research methods. Conclusion The findings indicate that the CFCS program promotes PID among medical students. The current data highlight and provide insights into the importance of integrating CBE into medical curricula to prepare future doctors for their entry into the profession.

Purpose Most of the resilience scales were developed for the non-medical population, therefore the purpose of this study was developing and validating a resilience scale for medical professionals – namely Medical Professionals Resilience Scale (MeRS). Methods A questionnaire development and validation study was conducted. The resilience domains and items were identified and generated through a literature review. The content validation was carried out by content experts and the content validity index (CVI) was calculated. The face validation was performed by medical officers and the face validity index (FVI) was calculated. The final MeRS was administered to 167 medical officers, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and reliability analysis were performed to assess MeRS’s factorial structure and internal consistency. Results Four domains with 89 items of medical professionals’ resilience were developed. Following that, the content and face validation was conducted, and a total of 41-items remained for construct validation. EFA extracted four factors, namely growth, control, involvement, and resourceful, with a total of 37 items. The items’ CVI and FVI values were more than 0.80. The final MeRS’s items had factor loading values ranged from 0.41 to 0.76, and the Cronbach’s alpha values of the resilience domains ranged from 0.72 to 0.89. Conclusions MeRS is a promising scale for measuring medical professionals’ resilience as it showed good psychometric properties. This study provided validity evidence in terms of content, response process, and internal structure that supported the validity of MeRS in the measurement of resilience domains among medical professionals.