Improving Learning Efficiency of Factual Knowledge in Medical Education

Objective The purpose of this review is to synthesize recent literature relating to factual knowledge acquisition and retention and to explore its applications to medical education. Results Distributing, or spacing, practice is superior to massed practice (i.e. cramming). Testing, compared to re-stu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of surgical education Vol. 72; no. 5; pp. 882 - 889
Main Authors Yeh, D. Dante, MD, FACS, Park, Yoon Soo, PhD
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Elsevier Inc 01.09.2015
Subjects
distributive practice
Education, Medical
Feedback
Humans
Knowledge
Learning
medical education
Medical Knowledge
smartphones
Surgery
testing effect
feedback
smartphones
medical education
testing effect
distributive practice
Medical Knowledge
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Summary:Objective The purpose of this review is to synthesize recent literature relating to factual knowledge acquisition and retention and to explore its applications to medical education. Results Distributing, or spacing, practice is superior to massed practice (i.e. cramming). Testing, compared to re-study, produces better learning and knowledge retention, especially if tested as retrieval format (short answer) rather than recognition format (multiple choice). Feedback is important to solidify the testing effect. Conclusions Learning basic factual knowledge is often overlooked and under-appreciated in medical education. Implications for applying these concepts to smartphones are discussed; smartphones are owned by the majority of medical trainees and can be used to deploy evidence-based educational methods to greatly enhance learning of factual knowledge.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-3
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ObjectType-Review-1
ISSN:1931-7204
1878-7452
DOI:10.1016/j.jsurg.2015.03.012