A Study About Teaching Reform To Undergraduates In One Medical College In A "General Practice Introduction"

ObjectiveThe carrying out health education in higher medical institute and the encouragement to the medical graduates to serve the community health care service center are the important mission to serve the medical and health works and also the inherent requirement of medical education adapted to medical model reform. The curriculum setting of Introduction to General Practice course and the popularilizing of medical knowledge education of General Practice to medical undergraduates are the basis of General Practice education, which will lay a foundation of knowledge, ability, and quality for the medical graduates to work in the community health care service center or to carry out the General Practice coordinated care in specialized health care. By comprehensive analysis on the the present situation in General Practice education of medical undergraduates in China, we need to adjust and optimize the teaching model in order to improve the teaching quality and achieve the teaching goals, what's more, promote the training of high-quality talents. Based on related of research results from both at home and abroad and the modern educational ideas, this research constructs the appropriate teaching model in two different conditions, chooses the teaching reform of Introduction to General Practice courses in China Medical University as the typical case, analyse the fore-and-aft effects of the teaching reform, gather the experience and provide references for the construction of General Practice courses.Materials and MethodsThe teachers and students involved in the Introduction to General Practice courses of 2007-2009 academic year were enrolled in the research. The article mainly uses several kinds of methods synthetically, such as the literature research, questionnaire survey, and the thematic interviews to understand the present situation, problems and requirements, and construct and assess the effect of the implementation of new teaching model. This article uses the SPSS16.0 software to do the statistic analysis, and the x2 test and t-test or the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test and the analytical test method are also used according to different kinds of statistics.ResultsNowadays, there are only 51 (45.5%) institutions that have set General Practice course among the 112 institutions of higher medical that set clinic medicine for the undergraduates in our country. And there are the differences and unbalanced development in the nature of the course, the teaching hours, and the quantity and allocation of teachers. Moreover, there exist common problems such as single teaching methods and means, the insufficient importance of practice teaching, and delayed teaching and researching work. This study shows that traditional classroom teaching can complete the basic teaching tasks, and make more than 95% students clearly understand that the role of General Practice in health service system, the idea of General Practice and working task and manners of general practioners, and also raise the interests in General Practice. However, the medical students would like the teachers give classes with methods of case and PBL and they want to have more chances to learn in community health service stations in order to look into the the models of medical service, etc.Our country still is in the initial stage of General Practice courses construction, for this reason, this study designs two models of teaching in different applicable conditions. That is, Model one:"Case as center and community as orientation" and Model two: "Case as center, issue as base, and community as orientation". The two teaching objectives are similar that they both strengthen the students' basic ability and overall quality on the base of completing the basic teaching tasks of general practice. Model one will be applied to the selective courses with the conditions of 16-20 teaching hours, less teachers, and large-sized classroom teaching; Model two will be applied to the required courses (or selective courses) with the conditions of sufficient teachers, more reasonable structure and large-sized or smll-sized classroom and practice teaching. Compared with the two test results, more than 95% students believe that the new teaching model can raise the students' ability in many ways because of the significant differences in exam results. Model two is more helpful to promote the students' ability of lifelong learning and analysing and solving problems as a result of adopting the PBL teaching method. The total score of the students' evaluation of the teaching quality is more than 95. (The full mark is 100).ConclusionThe effect of General Practice teaching in medical undergraduates is improved remarkably and further improved the quality of teaching through the course teaching model reform of Introduction to General Practice. The new teaching model is more targeted, more operable and more optimal efficient. The students also take the supportive attitude to the new teaching model.