One week with the experts: a short course improves musculoskeletal undergraduate medical education

Musculoskeletal problems constitute a considerable workload across all medical and surgical disciplines. There is a mismatch between the burden of musculoskeletal medicine seen by non-orthopaedists clinically and the amount of time afforded it in undergraduate training. Recent initiatives to address this include the United States Bone and Joint Decade and curricular innovations that demonstrate a benefit from improved instruction. Such curricular interventions are usually situated within a wider program reform and last a short time. Gaining institutional support and securing curricular time are challenging. This article shows the positive evaluation of a brief, intense course on musculoskeletal medicine.

A one-week course was offered to 154 medical students. The study took place in Ireland, where the student body comprises a mix of graduate students and undergraduate students, who enter medical school directly from second-level education. This course comprised brief didactic talks, case-based small group work, and physical examination skills demonstration. Attitudes toward musculoskeletal medicine prior to the course were elicited. The course was evaluated using pre-course and post-course standardized cognitive tests. Long-term retention was evaluated by end-of-year extended matching questions and an objective standardized clinical examination station. The test results between undergraduate and graduate students and student rating of musculoskeletal medicine as important or less important were compared.

Complete data were available for 125 students (81%). Seventy-four percent of students rated musculoskeletal medicine to be of major or critical importance to their career. There was a significant difference (p < 0.001, r = 0.678) in the mean score of the standardized cognitive test between the pre-course test and the post-course test; the mean performance score (and standard deviation) was 48.2% ± 14.2% (range, 17% to 79%), with a pass rate of 3.3%, for the pre-course test and 75.3% ± 15.02% (range, 32% to 100%), with a pass rate of 61%, for the post-course test. At the end of the year, 69.9% of students passed the extended matching questions and 96.7% passed an objective standardized clinical examination station. Graduate students performed better on the post-course standardized cognitive test score (p < 0.001) and objective standardized clinical examination (p < 0.05). Students who rated musculoskeletal medicine as important did not perform better than those who rated it as less important (p = 0.334).

We report a favorable evaluation of a short, intense course on musculoskeletal medicine and suggest that the introduction of basic concepts of musculoskeletal medicine is feasible within established curricula.