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Students or medical professionals: whose knowledge improved after social-medicine training? Results from a
Beate Muschalla1, Stefanie Baron2, Theresa Klevers3
1Technische Universität Braunschweig, Psychotherapy and Diagnostics, Humboldtstraße 33, 38106, Braunschweig, Germany. beate.muschalla@gmx.de.
Purpose:
Rehabilitation professionals are faced with judging and describing the social-medicine status of their patients. Rehabilitation professionals must know the core concepts of acute unfitness for work, psychological capacities, and long-term work capacity. Acquiring and applying this knowledge, requires training. The research question is if and to what extent medical professionals and students' knowledge changes after social medicine training.
Methods:
This quasi-experimental study was carried out in the real-life context of social medicine training. Psychology students (n = 42), physicians/psychotherapists (i.e. state-licensed health professionals) (n = 44) and medical assistant professionals (n = 29) were trained. Their social medicine knowledge was measured before and after training by a 10-min expert-approved and content valid knowledge questionnaire. Three free-text questions had to be answered on the essential aspects of present and prognostic work ability and psychological capacities. Answers were rated for correctness by two experts. Paired t tests and variance analysis have been calculated for group comparisons.
Results:
All groups improved their social medicine knowledge from the pre- to the post-test. The students started with the lowest level of knowledge in the pre-test. After training, 69% of the physicians/psychotherapists and 56.8% of the medical assistant professionals, but only 7% of the students, obtained maximum scores for naming psychological capacities.
Conclusions:
Social medicine knowledge increased after a training course consisting of eight lessons. The increase was greater for medical assistant professionals and physicians/psychotherapists than for students. Social medicine training must be adjusted to the trainee groups' knowledge levels.
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