BackgroundBasic medical skills such as history taking and physical examination are essential components of clinical work profiles, but nevertheless have been neglected by conventional preclinical curricula. The near-peer-teaching program AaL plus [living anatomy plus] teaches basic medical skills, especially history taking, physical examination, and venepuncture, to preclinical students. It is a highly popular compulsory course in the first four semesters (320 students/year, 9h/semester) at Heidelberg University and ends with a formative Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) during which students receive structured in-depth feedback on their performance. AaL plus is part of the Department of General Practice's longitudinal curriculum for Family Medicine.
ObjectivesThis study aims to assess whether the AaL plus program has positive effects on students' clinical skill development and subjective confidence in history taking, physical examination and venepuncture.
MethodsFrom 2015 to 2019, we asked all AaL plus participants to rate the program and self-assess their medical skills on 5-point Likert scales (min 1, max 5). In 4-station OSCEs, trained tutors rated the students' performance in all taught skills using standardized checklists.
ResultsFrom 2015 to 2019 n = 1534 questionnaires returned (response rate = 98.6%, 52.7% females). After course completion, students felt able to take a patient's history (mean 3.97, SD = 0.75) and perform physical examinations (means range 3.82-4.36, SDs range 0.74-0.89) as well as venepuncture (mean 4.12, SD = 0.88). A large majority of students claimed they acquired these skills in the AaL plus program. During OSCE, 81.9% passed anamnesis,