Abstract:
Background: Since the revision of the medical licensure act (ÄAppO) 2003, family medicine (FM) has been installed as a four month lasting elective (eFM) in the final year of the medical school curriculum. The first students absolved the eFM in 2006 at the University of Tübingen.
One purpose of this evaluation was to receive the feedback from the first students on the eFM at the University of Tübingen with an semi-qualitative Question form.
An other aim of this study was to collect data on students self-assessment of features proved at the final exams which are defined in § 28 of the ÄAppO. A third goal was to compare the teachers education aim with the students opinion about the received education level: Defining a specific level for each goal and asking the students to define for themselves the designated level.
Methods: Survey among the first 22 eFM students of the University of Tübingen and a control group (cg; n=22; other elective courses) valued at standardised questionnaire after the elective.
The enquiry of the semi-qualitative Feedback occurred with 5 open questions (about positive/negative impressions, about deficits and about important/less important study contents). Naming the 5 most important answers of each question in the order of importance, the answers were given points, arranged in the order of precedence and rearranged into clusters.
The second part of the evaluation contained questions about the 17 study contens named at §28 of the ÄAppO and 9 extra specific FM contents (like “Epidemiology”) by means of a 10-point ranking scale for self-assessment. Applying the Bonferroni method, the groups were analysed by means of the Wilcoxon rank-sum test.
In the third part (which was exclusive for FM-students) there were specific study contents for self-assessment given (general-practice contents, medical history and examination, diagnostic investigation and therapy at common disease patterns). The results were compared with the pre-defined phrases of the FM department using Wilcoxon signed-rank test applying the Bonferroni method.
Results: The results from the first questionnaire part showed a homogeneous pattern with the possibility to build similarly cluster to each question in both groups.
"Supervision and work surrounding" was top-ranked in both groups. Students with eFM ranked low "organisation", from the cg was "scope of duties" low-ranked.
Concerning students self-assessment of features proved at the final exams the medians of almost all features of § 28 of the ÄAppO were higher in the eFM group. Significant results in favour of the eFM group were obtained in terms of the features “health economy” (median [eGP/cg] 8 / 5, p < 0,0001), “Rules of drug prescription” (median 8 / 1, p < 0,0001), “Salutogenesis” (median 7 / 3, p = 0,001) and “prevention” (median 8 / 2,5, p = 0,001).
Concerning the special-FM items we achieve 4 significant items out of 9: " home visit by the doctor"(8/0; p<0,0001), "often ocurring diseases" (8/7; p=0,004), "holistic medicine"(7,5/3,5; p<0,0001) and " interdisciplinary work" (7/4,5; p=0,002).
Comparing the self-assesments with the aimed learning level of the FM faculty in the third part of the questionnaire the students rank themselfes in more then 60% of the items better or equal to the aimed score. For the items "examination" and "therapy" there is no significance in worse self-asessment of the students.
Conclusion: The results provide further informative basic data on the learning and teaching situation of the eFM.
The first questionnaire part shows with the homogeneouse clusters in all questiones and both groups that students of all disciplines evaluate similar things positively and negativly. There´s a drift to a better appraisal of the eFM (more points in the positive questions and less in the negative ones).
The assessements of the features of §28 was for the cg students not significantly better then for the eFM students, quire the contrary in some cases. It is suggested that the features of § 28 can be achieved by the students during the eFM too.
The third part shows that the achievement of the level of education aimed from the FM faculty is not yet fully accomplished.
The results are also interesting interms of the discussion to introduce FM in the final year of medical school curriculum as a further required subject besides internal medicine and surgery. In a next step, it keeps to be evaluated whether the features of § 28 can actually be achieved by the students.