Can near-peer medical students effectively teach a new curriculum in physical examination?

Abstract

BackgroundStudents in German medical schools frequently complain that the subject ‘clinical examination’ is not taught in a satisfying manner due to time constraints and lack of personnel resources. While the effectiveness and efficiency of practice-oriented teaching in small groups using near-peer teaching has been shown, it is rarely used in German medical schools. We investigated whether adding a new near-peer teaching course developed with student input plus patient examination under supervision in small groups improves basic clinical examination skills in third year medical students compared to a traditional clinical examination course alone.MethodsThird year medical students registered for the mandatory curricular clinical examination course at the medical faculty of the Technische Universität München were invited to participate in a randomised trial with blinded outcome assessment. Students were randomised to the control group participating in the established curricular physical examination course or to the intervention group, which received additional near-peer teaching for the same content. The learning success was verified by a voluntary objective structured clinical examination (OSCE).ResultsA total of 84 students were randomised and 53 (63%) participated in the final OSCE. Students in the control group scored a median of 57% (25th percentile 47%, 75th percentile 61%) of the maximum possible total points of the OSCE compared to 77% (73%, 80%; p < 0.001) for students in the intervention group. Only two students in the intervention group received a lower score than the best student in the control group.ConclusionAdding a near-peer teaching course to the routine course significantly improved the clinical examination skills of medical students in an efficient manner in the context of a resource-constrained setting.

The Efficacy of Frontline Near‐Peer Teaching in a Modern Medical Curriculum

“…The current study uses knowledge gain as an objective outcome measure for efficacy to demonstrate that students are capable of significant learning when new content is delivered first by NPTs. This adds to the increasing body of evidence supporting the diversity of NPT application in medical education (Blank et al, ; Cantwell et al, ), and should be a source of encouragement to colleagues considering the implementation of frontline NPT. There does not appear to be any previously published literature evidencing NPT as a frontline approach.…”

Distant peer-tutoring of clinical skills, using tablets with instructional videos and Skype: A pilot study in the UK and Malaysia

“…Research has suggested peer-tutoring of clinical examination could be of great use in developing countries, where resources are limited and there is a lack of trained clinical educators due to the expanding healthcare system (Ten Cate & Durning 2007;Blank et al 2013;Mutwali & Hassan 2013). Teaching clinical skills at an early stage to students via peer tutoring has been shown to be very effective (1).…”

Évaluation du savoir-faire en sémiologie clinique des étudiants en fin de deuxième cycle des études médicales

“…L'intérêt d'apprendre en situation aussi proche que possible de la pratique réelle est bien démontré [18]. Un enseignement mobilisant les étudiants plus avancés pour former les autres est possible et efficace [19,20]. De même, la méthode du « peer physical examination », où les étudiant apprennent à s'examiner entre eux, sous la supervision d'un enseignant qui valide l'apprentissage des différentes techniques d'examen clinique, a également fait l'objet d'expériences intéressantes [21] (plusieurs universités, dont l'université de Versailles Saint-Quentin en Yvelines en France, ont mis en oeuvre cet enseignement spécifique de la sémiologie, standardisé, obligatoire et évalué par un examen sanctionnant).…”