Medical Students’ Opinion of a Web-based Module to Teach Clinical Reasoning and Knowledge

Abstract

Background: Japanese medical student education lacks emphasis on teaching clinical reasoning skills. To partially remedy this situation, we developed a prototypic web‐based module for tutors to teach clinical reasoning. We report the medical students' opinions of this module. Methods: Twenty‐four students from two Japanese medical universities were randomly assigned to the two tutored virtual classrooms, each classroom with six students, or to the self‐study group, 12 students, after taking the Internet‐based Sequential Question and Answer pretest. After four weeks, each of the 24 students took the Sequential Question and Answer posttest. The entire 24 students answered a questionnaire about the Sequential Question and Answer tests; all 12 tutored students answered a questionnaire about the web‐based tutored module. Results: Although both tutored and self‐study Sequential Question and Answer posttest scores increased, the increases of the tutored group's posttest compared to the self‐study posttest group were not statistically significant (p = 0.066). Ninety‐two percent of the students rated the Sequential Question and Answer tests as an improved way to learn case presentation and clinical reasoning. Moreover, 79% of students felt that the Sequential Question and Answer tests were an effective way to learn clinical information. The tutored students rated the web‐based tutored seminars as an ‘excellent to fair’ method to learn clinical reasoning using a five‐point ‘excellent to poor’ scale. Conclusions: We developed a prototypic web‐based module for tutors to teach clinical reasoning to medical students. The students' opinion supported the modular components of the web‐based seminar format, Sequential Question and Answer test, and the tutoring syllabus as an effective way to improve learning clinical reasoning, case presentation, and medical information. Students also suggested refinements of the prototypic module.