Teaching lifestyle medicine competencies in undergraduate medical education: active collaborative intervention for students at multiple locations

Abstract

The aims of this study are to 1) design feasible active collaborative educational approaches to teach and assess three of the newly described lifestyle medicine (LM) competencies to students at multiple locations; and 2) determine whether a mixed, flexible instructional delivery approach impacts students’ learning and perception of confidence in LM. The educational interventions were part of the undergraduate clinical medical education curriculum and have two parts: 1) an asynchronous session [online self-learning module (SLM)], and 2) a synchronous session using case-based collaborative learning delivered either mostly face to face, as determined by the instructor ( approach A) or mostly virtual, as determined by the student ( approach B). Both approaches were delivered in the curriculum as planned to 27 students in approach A (26% attending virtually) and 31 students in approach B (90% attending virtually). Approach B required more planning time. Approach A students (26 of 27) agreed that the SLM was valuable as an educational tool. The performance in the summative assessment was similar ( P = 0.49) in both approaches [means (SD): 33.2 points (SD 10.6) approach A vs. 33.2 points (SD 10.1) approach B]. Students reported a similar increase in confidence ( P = 0.33) with setting lifestyle change goals. The two educational approaches presented here address three of the new LM competencies using active collaborative learning. Both approaches are feasible for synchronous delivery to students located at local and distant sites, either face to face or virtual. The increase in the proportion of students attending virtually did not decrease the measured outcomes of learning and perceptions of confidence.

Online case-based learning in medical education: a scoping review

“…After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 70 full-text studies were included to be assessed for eligibility. Of these, 58 studies were excluded which resulted in 13 articles [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] in the scoping review. The main reasons why articles were excluded were for the following reasons: conference proceedings; wrong cohort (for example not medical education); wrong study design (not online small group learning) or a hybrid design of mixed online computer simulated patient or e-Learning case in a face-to-face learning environment (not online small group design).…”

“…However, it was difficult to establish if and how a learning theory or framework could be determined as successful in online small group learning as only three (21%) of the studies in this review applied a framework. One study applied Bloom’s taxonomy [ 52 ] to define and distinguish different levels of human cognition [ 40 ] and two studies [ 30 , 39 ] used Kirkpatrick’s model [ 53 ] for training evaluation, neither is exclusive to online learning.…”

Four-year longitudinal culinary and lifestyle medicine track for undergraduate medical students: development and implementation

“…To date, the majority of initiatives to improve delivery of these concepts to medical students include brief courses, workshops, and learning sessions within the traditional curriculum [ 2 , 3 , 12–14 ]. The University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville is an example of a medical school that has taken a more comprehensive approach when integrating lifestyle medicine into the traditional medical school curriculum [ 15 ].…”