Why do pre-clinical medical students learn ultrasound? Exploring learning motivation through ERG theory

Abstract

Background Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) has become a hot issue and trend in medical education in recent years. Ultrasound is an indispensable skill for clinical physicians. Previous studies have already discussed the importance of and advancements in ultrasound education. However, learning motivations with regard to ultrasound education have seldom been discussed in the literature. For medical students, learning ultrasound could have a strong connection with their future career. ERG theory extended Maslow's hierarchy of needs through the concepts of existence, relatedness, and growth. The theory has been widely used in the workplace to analyze employee job performance but has not been applied in medical education. As mentioned above, we seek to analyze pre-clinical medical students’ learning motivation toward ultrasound education with regard to their future careers by applying ERG theory. Method This mixed method design used questionnaires for data collection. We also produced further qualitative and quantitative results. The research team asked learners neutral and open-ended questions. After data collection, three steps for analysis were followed based on grounded theory. Finally, the results of the thematic coding were used to complete the quantitative analysis. Results Our study involved 140 pre-clinical medical students, and their responses fell into 13 categories. Our test showed that students’ motivations toward ultrasound learning were unbalanced across the three ERG domains (F = 41.257, p < .001). Pairwise comparisons showed that students mentioned existence motivation (MD = 39.3%; p < .001) and growth motivation (MD = 40.7%; p < .001) more than relatedness motivation. However, there was no significant difference between existence motivation and growth motivation (MD = -1.4%; p = .830). Conclusion Based on our survey, first, we found that students placed a high value on existence and growth needs rather than relatedness. In addition, we recommend that ERG theory be applied in medical education motivation analysis.

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