An educational initiative to improve medical student awareness about brain death

Medical student knowledge about brain death determination is limited. We describe an educational initiative to improve medical student awareness about brain death and assess the impact of this initiative.

Beginning in July 2016, students at our medical school were required to attend a 90-min brain death didactic and simulation session during their neurology clerkship. Students completed a test immediately before and after participating in the initiative.

Of the 145 students who participated in this educational initiative between July 2016 and June 2017, 124 (86%) consented to have their data used for research purposes as part of a medical education registry. Students correctly answered a median of 53% of questions (IQR 47-58%) on the pretest and 86% of questions (IQR 78-89%) on the posttest (p < .001). Comfort with both performing a brain death evaluation and talking to a family about brain death improved significantly after this initiative (18% of students were comfortable performing a brain death evaluation before the initiative and 86% were comfortable doing so after the initiative, p < .001; 18% were comfortable talking to a family about brain death before the initiative and 76% were comfortable doing so after the initiative, p < .001).

Incorporation of simulation in undergraduate medical education is high-yield. At our medical school, knowledge about brain death and comfort performing a brain death exam or talking to a family about brain death was limited prior to development of this initiative, but awareness and comfort dealing with brain death improved significantly after this initiative.