Evaluation of a Biomedical Informatics course for medical students: a Pre-posttest study at UNAM Faculty of Medicine in Mexico

Abstract

BackgroundBiomedical Informatics (BMI) education in medical schools is developing a sound curricular base, but there are few published reports of their educational usefulness. The goal of this paper is to assess knowledge change and satisfaction in medical students after a BMI curriculum.MethodsThe National Autonomous University of México Faculty of Medicine (UNAM) recently implemented a curricular reform that includes two BMI sequential courses (BMI-1 and BMI-2). The research design was one-group pretest-posttest. An objective test with evidence of validity was used for knowledge measurement. A satisfaction questionnaire was applied at the end of the courses. Two-tailed paired Student’s t-tests were applied, comparing knowledge scores in the pre and post-test for each course.ResultsThe study included student cohorts during two consecutive academic years. The 2013 BMI-1 course (n = 986 students) knowledge pretest score was 43.0 ± 8.6 (mean percent correct ± SD), and the post-test score was 57.7 ± 10.3 (p < 0.001); the 2014 BMI-1 (n = 907) pretest score was 43.7 ± 8.5, and the post-test was 58.1 ± 10.5 (p < 0.001). The 2012 BMI-2 course (n = 683) pretest score was 26.3 ± 7.9, the post-test score was 44.3 ± 13.3 (p < 0.001); the 2013 BMI-2 (n = 926) pretest score was 27.5 ± 7.5, and the post-test was 42.0 ± 11.0 (p < 0.001). The overall opinion of the students regarding the course was from good to excellent, with a response rate higher than 90%. The satisfaction questionnaires had high reliability (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.93).ConclusionsThe study shows a significant increase in BMI knowledge after an educational intervention in four medical student cohorts, and an overall positive evaluation by the students. Long-term follow-up is needed, as well as controlled studies of BMI educational interventions using performance endpoints.

One-day workshop-based training improves physical activity prescription knowledge in Latin American physicians: a pre-test post-test study

“…The short-term nature of the workshop was also a benefit since it diminished external factors that could have had an effect on the internal validity and facilitated replication and scale-up. Other continued medical education interventions have found short-term strategies to be an effective way to increase knowledge [47]. The study also had some weaknesses.…”

Promoting Service Leadership Qualities and Well-Being among University Students: Evaluation Findings in Hong Kong

“…Yang et al ( 2014) also used the one-group pretest-posttest design to evaluate the effectiveness of a blended course in enhancing university students' critical thinking and English literacy. Sánchez-Mendiola et al (2015) utilized this research design to examine the knowledge acquisition among medical students after taking a Biomedical Informatics course.…”

Artificial Intelligence Education Programs for Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review

“…The initial database search yielded 13,449 results; once duplicates were removed, the titles and abstracts of 10,094 (75.05%) unique citations were identified. From the 10,094 unique citations, we identified 41 (0.41%) articles [2,5,13,, where 13 unique, existing programs [32,35,39,43,49,50,59,[61][62][63] were mentioned in 10 (24%) articles, and the remaining 31 (76%) articles [2,5,13,[26][27][28][29][30][31]33,34,[36][37][38][40][41][42][44][45][46][47][48][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58]60] discussed the desired or recommended curricular content. The article selection process is presented in Figure 1.…”

“…The article selection process is presented in Figure 1. Of the 10 articles that discussed an existing program, 8 (80%) were commentaries [32,43,49,50,59,[61][62][63], 1 (10%) was a case report [39], and 1 (10%) was an empirical study [35]. Tables 2 and 3 describe the characteristics of the articles and programs included in this review.…”