Curriculum Innovations: Enhancing Medical Student Neuroscience Training With a Team-Based Learning Curriculum

Neurophobia, the fear of, discomfort with, and dislike of clinical neurology, is frequently due to poor experiences in preclinical neuroscience education among medical providers. We developed, implemented, and assessed a curricular innovation using clinician-educators and team-based learning (TBL) with the goals to demonstrate clinical relevance in neuropathology, enhance student engagement in neuropathology education, and promote direct application of knowledge.

We identified an underperforming neuropathology curriculum within the second-year medical student neuroscience course at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and implemented a traditional TBL curriculum to deliver this content. In addition, we transitioned to primarily clinician-led lectures in the neuropathology curriculum. We assessed student opinions of the curricular changes though end-of-course feedback, the implementation of a novel survey, and semistructured interviews with students. We assessed outcomes on the course final examination and overall course performance, comparing student performance in the preimplementation phase (year 2020-2021) with that in the postimplementation phase (year 2021-2022) using a 2-sample t test.

Student opinions of the curricular changes were positive on the end-of-course evaluation (79.4% rated TBL as good or excellent) and novel survey (89%-96% of students rated the portions of the curriculum positively). Themes identified in free text responses and through qualitative interviews included an appreciation of the streamlined course content and a sense that the various sessions within the neuropathology curriculum effectively reinforced learning. Student performance on the final examination was similar in the preimplementation vs postimplementation phases (81.2% correct vs 80.3% correct; p = 0.37). Performance on the neuropathology subsection of the final examination was also similar among the 2 cohorts (82.6% correct vs 83.9% correct; p = 0.36).

We demonstrate the feasibility and utility of a transition to primarily neurologist and neurosurgeon-led lectures and the implementation of a TBL curriculum within a neuroscience course. While we report data from implementation at a single center, these results have potential relevance to other courses, given our demonstration that TBL is a useful method to deliver neuroscience learning, nonpathologist lecturers can effectively provide neuropathology education, and a small number of educational faculty can be engaged to deliver this material.