The knowledge and clinical and minor surgical skills acquired by 257 medical students in three universities in Sri Lanka and Malaysia were assessed by a questionnaire after they had completed their training period in ophthalmology. This study showed that many medical students graduating from these universities lacked the basic clinical and minor surgical skills essential for a doctor practising in a community in south-east Asia. The responses also indicated that teaching by consultants in all three universities was inadequate and due to these inadequacies the students requested that the duration of their training period be doubled. Ophthalmology is an important component of clinical practice and proper education in this subject is important. An urgent revision of the aims and objectives of the curriculum in ophthalmology is essential to place greater emphasis on this important and much neglected subject, for which very little curricular time is allotted.
Required learning of the basic medical sciences based on five clinical problems was compiled by teachers and subsequently derived as 'learning needs' by students during the problem-solving process. These lists of topics were compared in terms of number of lecture-hours and when these were taught in the traditional curriculum. The findings indicate that learning from problems is not entirely free-rein and can be largely determined by teachers; topics taught earlier in the course appeared more frequently than latter topics and there was a tremendous overlap of topics in both the traditional and problem-based list. Regardless of whether lectures have been given or not, students recalled facts better if they had encountered the related clinical problem. This study also reveals that problem-based learning can be as efficient as lectures in content coverage and concludes that the lecture method be retained provided the topics are selective and are derived and sequenced appropriately with clinical problems. Problem-solving should be adopted as a teaching strategy.
The suitability of physiology topics taught in the first-year dental curriculum needs to be investigated in the light of the view of the present generation of clinical and preclinical teachers, and students. This was studied in the University of Malaya in order to propose a rational physiology curriculum with proper identification of priority topics. Oral physiology, blood and the cardiovascular system were found to be the most relevant for dental students. Among the systems, high and low priority topics were identified and their relative importance is discussed.
It has been suggested that the 'ideal' measure of reliability of an examination is obtained by test and retest using the one examination on the same group of students. However, because of practical and theoretical arguments, most reported reliabilities for multiple choice examinations in medicine are actually measures of internal consistency. While attempting to minimize the effects of potential interfering factors, we have undertaken a study of true test-retest reliability of multiple true-false type multiple choice questions in preclinical medical subjects. From three end-of-term examinations, 363 items (106 of 449 from term 1, 150 of 499 from term 2, and 107 of 492 from term 3) were repeated in the final examination (out of 999 total items). Between test and retest, there was little overall decrease in the percentage of items answered correctly and a decrease of only 3.4 in the percentage score after correction for guessing. However, there was an inverse relation between test-retest interval and decrease in performance. Between test and retest, performance decreased significantly on 33 items and increased significantly on 11 items. Test-retest correlation coefficients were 0.70 to 0.78 for items from the separate terms and 0.885 for all items that were retested. Thus, overall, these items had a very high degree of reliability, approximately the 0.9 which has been specified as the requirement for being able to distinguish between individuals.
The belief that it is unwise to alter the initial response to a multiple choice question is questioned. Among 39 380 MCQ responses, there were 1818 changes (4.62%) of which 21.9% were correct to incorrect responses, 46.3% incorrect to correct responses and 31.8% incorrect to incorrect. This effect was very much more marked among the better students, incorrect to correct changes accounting for 61% of the responses in the upper group, 42% in the middle group and 34% in the lower group.
This paper describes the analysis of the written professional examinations administered at the Medical School, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), during the academic year 1979-80. It is a product of a collaborative activity involving medical teachers and two short-term consultants of the World Health Organization. The examination papers were analysed in order to identify content areas disproportionately emphasized in the examinations; to determine the quality and appropriateness of the examination items used; and to review the extent of continuity and integration across departments and courses. This paper is intended to introduce an approach to curriculum review which is based on analysis of the examination system. The procedures and sample outcomes are described and the implications for curriculum development and evaluation are discussed.
The multidiscipline laboratories (MDLs) of University of Malaya are a significant feature in the Faculty of Medicine. They provide facilities for a number of activities within the teaching curriculum. This is in contrast to the departmental type of laboratories. Being the first in the eastern hemisphere, they are gaining popularity among new medical schools in this part of the world. Since a number of visitors testify to a continued interest in the multidiscipline laboratories, an attempt is made to discuss our experience with these facilities in relation to tthe design, uses, organisation, staff requirement, student usage and space problems.
Behavioural self-analysis projects were introduced into the second year medical curriculum in behavioural sciences at the University of Malaya. Students performance and evaluation of the experience were compared with those of American medical students. It was concluded that receptivity of medical students to principles of behaviour therapy is relatively similar in the two societies.