RESEARCH ARTICLE
Structured Didactic Teaching Sessions Improve Medical Student Neurology Clerkship Test Scores: A Pilot Study
Daniel L Menkes*, Mary Reed
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2008Volume: 2
First Page: 8
Last Page: 11
Publisher ID: TONEUJ-2-8
DOI: 10.2174/1874205X00802010008
Article History:
Received Date: 20/2/2008Revision Received Date: 12/3/2008
Acceptance Date: 28/3/2008
Electronic publication date: 23/4/2008
Collection year: 2008

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/), which permits unrestrictive use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To determine the effectiveness of didactic case-based instruction methodology to improve medical student comprehension of common neurological illnesses and neurological emergencies. SETTING: Neurology department, academic university. PARTICIPANTS: 415 third and fourth year medical students performing a required four week neurology clerkship. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Raw test scores on a 1 hour, 50-item clinical vignette based examination and open-ended questions in a post-clerkship feedback session. RESULTS: There was a statistically significant improvement in overall test scores (p<0.001). CONCLUSION: Didactic teaching sessions have a significant positive impact on neurology student clerkship test score performance and perception of their educational experience. Confirmation of these results across multiple specialties in a multi-center trial is warranted.