A graduating medical school class evaluates their educational experience

To determine how graduating medical students perceive instructional settings, materials, and teachers as to importance or influence upon their education and how they would change curriculum and allocate educational resources based on their experience.

One hundred thirty-nine graduating medical students at the University of Wisconsin, Madison were offered five dollars to complete and return the survey. Students were asked to rate the importance or influence (1 = most important or influential, 5 = least important or influential) of more than forty educational settings, materials, teachers, and which aspects of the curriculum should be emphasized or preserved when educational resources become more limited. Open-ended responses were also allowed. Ratings were analyzed determining a mean and standard deviation. One way analysis of variance was used to determine whether there were differences among groups. When statistically significant differences existed, the Tukey HSD test was used to compare subsets of the group. In the only group with a dissimilar number of responders, T tests were used for comparison.

Sixty-four of 139 (46%) surveys were correctly completed and returned. Students rated the most important and influential parts of their education as experiences in years 3 and 4 of medical school. The most highly rated group of teachers were resident physicians (mean rating = 1.64, F (df = 343) = 12.55, p < .0001) during years 3 and 4 of medical school, followed by full time clinical faculty in years 3 and 4 (mean = 1.78), full time basic science faculty in years 1 and 2 (mean = 1.98), community physicians in years 3 and 4 (mean = 2.15), and teaching assistants in years 1 and 2 (mean = 2.75). Students rated the preservation of teaching efforts in years 1 and 2 (mean = 3.06), developing objective structured clinical examinations (mean = 3.21), and administering "board type" end of course examinations (mean = 3.42), as the lowest priority items for receiving educational resources. Coordination of the basic science and clinical years of medical school (mean = 2.03), problem based learning (mean = 2.08) and preserving teaching effort of years 3 and 4 clinical faculty (mean = 2.09) were the highest priorities for receiving resources. Open-ended comments indicated years 1 and 2 should be condensed and coordinated with years 3 and 4, making learning more clinically oriented.

Students at the end of their medical school education at the University of Wisconsin rate the clinical portions of their training as most important to their medical education and residents as their most important teachers. When asked how best to change medical education, their most common responses were to 1) make years 1 and 2 more clinically oriented, both by including patient care earlier and more often during those years, 2) take the repetitiveness out of the years 1 and 2 curriculum and 3) prepare students for years 3 and 4 with transitional classes.