Physician associate (PA) students' perceptions of team-based learning (TBL) for teaching in Geriatric medicine

Physician Associates have recently been introduced to the UK healthcare workforce. Their curriculum includes important topics in Geriatric medicine. As they undertake a 2-year intensive postgraduate course we wanted to explore if Team-based Learning is an effective and efficient learning strategy. In addition, we wanted to know how this approach compares to their current learning methods, namely Problem-based learning and lectures.

This was a qualitative study of Physician associate student perceptions of Team-Based Learning. After introducing four TBL sessions in the specialty of Geriatric medicine we sent students anonymous questionnaires asking them about their TBL experience and how it compared to PBL and lectures. We then undertook a thematic analysis of the responses.

Twenty students responded to our online questionnaire. The thematic analysis utilised themes from previous studies as well as emergent ones. The key themes were that TBL requires more preparation, TBL is effective, TBL is preferred to PBL and lectures, but students did not want TBL to replace all their teaching.

TBL is an effective learning strategy that can be used alongside other teaching methods. While Physician Associate students preferred TBL over PBL and lectures, they wanted to have TBL alongside lectures at least. This information is important when planning teaching for an intensive 2-year course.