PURPOSE
Perception of clinical relevance in Undergraduate Medical Education (UME)
significantly enhances learning retention among students. Actively engaging
students in clinical material has become widely used for similar reasons.
However, utilizing these strategies is less obvious in some key areas of UME,
such as the basic sciences. This abstract showcases positive students’
perceptions of a cellular biology session where clinical relevance is
integrated with basic sciences using active learning strategies, such as
co-teaching and peer-assisted learning (PAL).
METHODS
We redesigned a traditional didactic session into a PAL module, then
assessed students’ perceptions of clinical relevancy. Our module, titled
“Organelles”, placed students in charge of learning about an assigned
cellular organelle, then teaching the content to other students. It was
structured as a two-part session, with 100 minutes of asynchronous preparatory
content and 50 minutes of in-class active learning and PAL. Following module
completion, students took a voluntary survey which assessed their perception
of relevance and understanding.
RESULTS
Out of 265 medical students who participated in the module, 219 responded
to the survey (83%). Students reported they “agreed” or “strongly agreed”
that the session a) was relevant to their education at 88% (192/219), b)
improved their understanding through peer-teaching at 83% (181/219), c)
taught them new information at 79% (173/219), and d) was both an active and
engaging method to learn basic sciences at 75% (165/219).
CONCLUSION
UME has benefitted from integrating clinically relevant material. PAL
potentiates one method of promoting active engagement and increasing student
satisfaction in the basic sciences, which could be useful in an area of UME
less easily penetrated by clinical relevancy. PAL thus is a promising
complement to faculty-led teaching in undergraduate medical education.