Patients Encounter as a Motivating Factor for Academic Performance in a Medical Neuroscience Course.

BACKGROUND: The integration of patient encounters into the first year of the medical school curriculum is known to be of vital importance in the development of critical thinking and communication skills. We investigated whether exposure of first year medical students to patient encounters during a first year medical school neuroscience course result in a high level of motivation associated with the clinical encounter, and whether this high level of motivation translates to higher academic performance as measured by their performance on formative and summative examinations. METHODS: First year medical students interacted with patients presenting with different neurological disorders in a small group informal session. Following the small group interactions with patients, students participated in a large group debriefing session involving discussions with peers, biomedical sciences faculty, and clinicians. Students then completed a survey designed to assess their motivation in correspondence with the Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction (ARCS) model of motivation. These results were then correlated with students' performance in the neuroscience examinations. RESULTS: The total mean score was high for all categories of the ARCS model of motivation (4.26/5) and was highest for Relevance (4.46/5). When these motivation scores were correlated with students' performance on the formative and summative examinations, a significant positive correlation was found between motivation and performance on both the formative (r = 0.85) and summative (r = 0.95) neuroscience examinations. CONCLUSION: Encounters with patients presenting with neurological disorders during a first year medical neuroscience course result in a high level of motivation associated with the clinical encounter, and this was positively correlated with their academic performance.

The Impact of Meeting Patients with Neurological Disorders on Medical Student Empathy.

PURPOSE: Empathy tends to decline during medical education, typically beginning in the third year of medical school and often continuing throughout residency and the physician's medical career. The purpose of this study was to determine if first year medical student empathy is affected by small group interactions with patients with neurological disorders, and to investigate if changes in empathy persisted over time. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Eighty first year medical students participating in a Neuroscience Module interacted with a variety of neurological patients in a small group informational session. Prior to the experience, participants completed the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy-Student (JSPE-S) version. After the experience, students completed a post-test JSPE-S questionnaire, and a final post-post-test JSPE-S questionnaire was completed 5 weeks later. Empathy scores were compared with a repeated measures MANOVA. The relationship between gender and empathy, and the effect of the age of the neurological patients on empathy scores were also examined. RESULTS: Empathy scores for seventy-one students who completed the JSPE-S questionnaires were analyzed. Students had significantly higher empathy immediately after the patient interaction experience, and the change in empathy was sustained over the course of 5 weeks (p = 0.015). The age of the neurological patients had a significant effect on empathy scores. There was no significant difference between empathy scores and gender. CONCLUSIONS: This study supports the incorporation of a group patient interaction experience into the medical school curriculum as an inexpensive and practical method of enhancing medical student empathy in a non-clinical setting.

Motivation to Learn Neuroanatomy by Cadaveric Dissection is Correlated with Academic Performance.

Implementing educational activities, such as a wet lab with cadaveric brain dissection, is known to have a direct impact on medical students' motivation. These activities demonstrate the clinical relevance of concepts taught in the classroom setting. The correlation between motivation and academic performance is not clear. First year medical students participated in wet lab activities. The wet lab included cadaveric dissection of the surface and internal anatomy of the brain, as well as discussions facilitated by the neuroscience faculty and clinicians. Discussions were centered around the clinical relevance of the neuroanatomical features dissected during the wet laboratory activities. Following completion of the laboratory activities, students completed a survey, which was used to assess the students' motivation for learning neuroanatomy based on the Attention, Relevance, Confidence, Satisfaction (ARCS) model of motivation. These results were then correlated with performance on a laboratory examination that tested three-dimensional and cross-sectional knowledge of neuroanatomy and practical skills including the use of imaging techniques. The total mean score of motivation was generally high for all categories of ARCS model of motivation (4.26/5) and was highest for Relevance (4.46/5). When these results were correlated with students' performance on the lab examination, a positive correlation between students' motivation and lab examination scores was found (R2 = 0.877). Implementation of the neuroanatomy cadaveric dissection lab led to increased student motivation, which was positively correlated with students' academic performance. Clin. Anat. 32:128-135, 2019. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.