Using a web-based, iterative education model to enhance clinical clerkships

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Digital Learning
• Internal Medicine

Background:

• Traditional clinical clerkships aim for consistent exposure but struggle with individual student needs.
• Personalized learning is ideal but historically time-intensive to implement.
• Diverse student backgrounds necessitate adaptive educational strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate an iterative, web-based educational model for medical students.
• To assess the effectiveness of targeted teaching based on identified knowledge deficits.
• To improve the efficiency and personalization of internal medicine clerkship curricula.

Main Methods:

• A prospective study involving medical students in an internal medicine clerkship at Harvard Medical School.
• Weekly web-based assessments identified specific student knowledge deficits.
• An intervention group received targeted teaching, while a control group did not.

Main Results:

• The model successfully identified specific knowledge deficiencies weekly.
• Targeted teaching led to significantly better performance on subsequent assessments compared to controls.
• The web-based model was easily integrated into the existing curriculum with high student acceptance.

Conclusions:

• A web-based, iterative assessment model can effectively address unique curricular needs for individual student groups.
• This approach enables rapid, formative, and efficient targeted teaching.
• The model shows potential to enhance the efficiency of traditional clerkship education.