Recall knowledge of anatomy for interns after graduation from medical schools

Abstract

Background: Educational achievement testing is a challenging area of medical education. The purpose of the medical education is mainly to generate excellent medical physicians. There is several diverse systems of medical education in the world. We do not know which system is the best for training of medical students. It is a big issue in Sudanese medical schools to seek for the most effective medical education system.

Objectives: To analyze how medical education is carried out in medical schools by testing the recall knowledge of the basic sciences after graduation.

Material and Methods: We tested the recall knowledge of anatomy among interns after graduation from our different medical schools that implemented different medical education systems using a self-administered questionnaire consisted of 10 single best answer questions validated by anatomists and surgeons from 3 different universities adopting different types of curricula.

Results: A 365 interns within different training specialties were included for the final assessment. The anatomy was considered a difficult subject by 67.1%, and 67.7% were scored 5-7.The system adopted by participants' school of graduation, number and discipline of the rotation when participating in the study, whether preparing for specialty exam or not, showed high significant correlation with the score attained on answering the basic anatomy questions, (P<0.05). But the score was not influenced by gender and the time lapse since graduation, (P > 0.05).

Conclusion: Interns graduated from schools adopting integrated system or Hybrid system scores better than those graduated from schools adopting the conventional medical system.

Keywords: Anatomy; Medical education; Integrated (Problem-based); Conventional instructional (Discipline-based); Hybrid (Combination)