Impact of Learning Style on Medical Students' Satisfaction With Hands-On Procedural Training

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Learning Styles
• Procedural Training

Background:

• Hands-on procedural training is crucial for medical education.
• Little is known about how individual learning styles affect students' perception of procedural training relevance.
• Understanding learner variation is key to optimizing medical training.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the impact of Kolb's Experiential Learning Styles on pre-clerkship medical students' perceptions of hands-on procedural training.
• To assess satisfaction levels (engagement, enjoyment, career outlook) across different learning styles.
• To determine if training modifications are needed based on learning style differences.

Main Methods:

• 151 pre-clerkship medical students participated in an optional procedural training day.
• Students completed an exit survey assessing learning style (Kolb's model) and satisfaction.
• One-way ANOVA and Tukey's post hoc test were used for statistical comparisons.

Main Results:

• High overall satisfaction scores (mean > 6/7) for engagement, enjoyment, and career outlook across all learning styles.
• Assimilating and Accommodating learners reported highest enjoyment; Diverging learners reported lower enjoyment (p<0.05).
• No significant differences in engagement or career outlook; higher satisfaction noted when training aligned with preferred specialty (p<0.01).

Conclusions:

• Hands-on procedural training is effective for diverse Kolb learning styles, with high overall satisfaction.
• Statistically significant, but small, differences in enjoyment between groups suggest current methods require minimal adaptation.
• This study adds to the literature on learning styles in early medical procedural education, indicating broad applicability of current training approaches.