Effects of geriatric clinical skills training on the attitudes of medical students

BMC Medical Education

Andreas W Schoenenberger¹  Andreas E Stuck¹  Yvette D Stoeckli¹  André Moser²  Andrea Siegenthaler¹  Adrian O Goeldlin¹ 

[1] Division of Geriatrics, Department of General Internal Medicine, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, and University of Bern, CH-3010 Bern, Switzerland;Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

关键词: Attitude;    Medical;    Students;    Education;    Aged;   

Others  :  1090320
DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6920-14-233

 received in 2014-03-31, accepted in 2014-10-03,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

Physicians’ attitudes, knowledge and skills are powerful determinants of quality of care for older patients. Previous studies found that using educational interventions to improve attitude is a difficult task. No previous study sought to determine if a skills-oriented educational intervention improved student attitudes towards elderly patients.

Methods

This study evaluated the effect of a geriatric clinical skills training (CST) on attitudes of University of Bern medical students in their first year of clinical training. The geriatric CST consisted of four 2.5-hour teaching sessions that covered central domains of geriatric assessment (e.g., cognition, mobility), and a textbook used by students to self-prepare. Students’ attitudes were the primary outcome, and were assessed with the 14-item University of California at Los Angeles Geriatrics Attitudes Scale (UCLA-GAS) in a quasi-randomized fashion, either before or after geriatric CST.

Results

A total of 154 medical students participated. Students evaluated before the CST had a median UCLA-GAS overall scale of 49 (interquartile range 44–53). After the CST, the scores increased slightly, to 51 (interquartile range 47–54; median difference 2, 95% confidence interval 0–4, P = 0.062). Of the four validated UCLA-GAS subscales, only the resource distribution subscale was significantly higher in students evaluated after the geriatric CST (median difference 1, 95% confidence interval 0–2, P = 0.005).

Conclusions

Teaching that targets specific skills may improve the attitudes of medical students towards elderly patients, though the improvement was slight. The addition of attitude-building elements may improve the effectiveness of future skills-oriented educational interventions.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Goeldlin et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

Figure 1.

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