What do the Students Remember? A Retention Study among Irish Medical Students

• Published in: The FASEB journal Vol. 33; no. S1; p. 604.4
• Main Authors: Balta, Joy Y., Lone, Mutahira, Jurjus, Rosalyn A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology 01-04-2019
• ISSN: 0892-6638; 1530-6860
• DOI: 10.1096/fasebj.2019.33.1_supplement.604.4

Anatomy has for long been considered as the cornerstone of medical education [1]. Several research articles have reported a decrease in anatomical knowledge among medical students as they progress from their foundation years into the clinical years [2]. This decrease in knowledge has a significant impact on the students' performance hence influencing patient's safety. At George Washington University, a recent study quantified the loss of anatomical knowledge. As part of a multi‐centre study, this project was designed to assess the anatomical knowledge of the graduate entry medical students at University College Cork, Ireland. For this reasons, students were given the opportunity to take part in a multiple choice question based anatomy quiz at two different stages. The first quiz took place at the end of their first year after the delivery of all the anatomy component of the curriculum. The second quiz was taken halfway through their second year just before they started their clinical rotations. Ethical approval was granted by the Social Research Ethics Committee at University College Cork.
Results clearly show that there is a statistically significant overall loss in anatomical knowledge (P<0.05). Our findings corroborate with those reported by studies conducted at George Washington University. When taking a closer look at questions related to specific anatomical regions, the results show an overall decrease in all body systems with a major loss of knowledge in the gastrointestinal and urogenital systems followed by reproductive region. These results show that students tend to forget certain regions more than others regardless of when they were delivered, as the gastrointestinal system was taught 6 months before the second quiz while the upper limb was taught 14 months before the second quiz. Overall, students tend to forget the thoracic/abdominal/pelvic structures more in comparison to the upper and lower limbs. One attributable reason could be the manner in which the upper and lower limbs are taught, using a bio‐mechanical and clinical correlations. In the future, a similar study will be conducted to investigate the knowledge of the direct entry into medicine students (High School level). Further research is required to narrow this gap and device new teaching methods that will lead to a better retention of anatomical knowledge.
This is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this published in The FASEB Journal.