Learning Styles of Internal Medicine Residents and Association With the In-Training Examination Performance

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Psychometrics
• Internal Medicine Training

Background:

• Assessing medical resident learning is crucial for effective training and standardized test performance.
• Kolb's learning styles (accommodating, assimilating, converging, diverging) are based on four learning stages.
• The American College of Physicians (ACP) Internal Medicine In-Training Examination (IM-ITE) correlates with clinical and board certification success.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the association between individual learning styles of Internal Medicine (IM) residents and their performance on the ACP IM-ITE.
• To understand how different learning preferences might influence resident academic outcomes.

Main Methods:

• Kolb's Learning Style Inventory (LSI) questionnaire administered to IM residents during the 2016/2017 academic year.
• Logistic regression analysis used to correlate preferred learning styles with ACP IM-ITE performance.
• Data collected from 53 residents in the Morehouse School of Medicine IM Residency Program.

Main Results:

• The predominant learning styles identified were assimilating (49%) and converging (26%).
• No significant differences in learning styles were observed across gender, age, race, or postgraduate year (PGY) levels.
• Residents with a diverging learning style achieved the highest mean IM-ITE percentage score, followed by assimilating and converging styles (P = 0.14).

Conclusions:

• Assimilating and converging are the predominant learning styles among IM residents, aligning with previous research.
• A diverging learning style appears to be associated with better performance on the IM-ITE.
• Future research should explore integrating brainstorming and group work into residency curricula to assess their impact on academic performance.