Peer-assisted teaching method to foster learning physiological basis of electrocardiography among 1^st year medical...

In peer-assisted teaching (PAT) method, students are encouraged to prepare, organize, and construct their learning program under the guidance of a teacher. The objective of the present study is to assess the benefits and outcome of PAT on students' understanding and knowledge of one of the important and difficult topics, "physiological basis of electrocardiography (ECG)."

A nonrandomized, interventional study was carried out in the department of physiology. Five peer tutors were selected and trained in the basics of ECG by a senior faculty of physiology for 12-14 h sessions over the 6-week period. These peer tutors then conducted a day-long workshop on five different subtopics of ECG, which was attended by 184 1^st year medical students. Evaluation of the workshop was done through pre/posttest 20-item questionnaire score analysis and feedback questionnaire using a 5-point Likert scale items.

The average pre- and posttest scores were 6.6 ± 2.73 and 13.3 ± 4.73, respectively. The average posttest scores were higher and statistically significant compared to pretest (R ²= 0.4275; P < 0.05). The class average normalized gain (g) for a posttest score was 101.5%. Of 184 students, 9.7% of students had >70% improvement from the pretest score, and 44.78% had more than 50% improvement in their posttest scores.

We received a predominantly positive feedback for the usefulness of peer teaching as a learning method. Thus, PAT was found to be a feasible and effective way of teaching the difficult concepts in physiology.