Integrating the History of Neurosurgery into Clinical Teaching: A Historically Controlled Study of Knowledge...

To examine whether integrating the history of neurosurgery into standard clinical teaching is associated with improved performance on a knowledge assessment and more favorable student perceptions of the educational experience, compared with conventional clinical teaching without dedicated historical content.

We conducted a non-randomized, historically controlled study of clinical medical students completing a neurosurgery rotation at the First Affiliated Hospital of Wannan Medical College between September 2023 and July 2025. Students who completed training before June 2024 (control group, n = 37) received standard clinical teaching; those who completed training after July 2024 (research group, n = 44) received the same curriculum enriched with integrated neurosurgical history content. Outcomes were assessed using a purpose-designed knowledge test and a locally developed questionnaire measuring students' self-reported perceptions across seven educational domains.

Eighty-one valid assessments were analyzed. The research group achieved significantly higher composite knowledge scores (85.68 ± 1.890 vs 65.57 ± 2.754; mean difference 20.11 [95% CI: 19.04, 21.18]; t=37.60, P<0.001; Cohen's d=8.66), neurosurgical knowledge scores (93.86 ± 2.299 vs 80.86 ± 2.689; mean difference 13.00 [95% CI: 11.88, 14.12]; t=23.14, P<0.001; Cohen's d=5.23), and medical history knowledge scores (77.50 ± 3.084 vs 50.27 ± 4.765; mean difference 27.23 [95% CI: 25.41, 29.05]; t=29.89, P<0.001; Cohen's d=6.91). Across all seven questionnaire domains, significantly higher proportions of research group students reported perceived educational benefit (all unadjusted P<0.05; four of seven comparisons remained significant at the Bonferroni-adjusted threshold of P<0.0071).

This historically controlled study provides preliminary evidence that integrating the history of neurosurgery into clinical teaching may be associated with improved knowledge-test performance and more favorable student perceptions. These findings are hypothesis-generating and require confirmation through prospective, randomized, multicenter studies.