The relationship between medical students’ epistemological beliefs and achievement on a clinical performance examination

• Published in: Korean journal of medical education Vol. 28; no. 1; pp. 29 - 34
• Main Authors: Sun-A Oh, Eun-Kyung Chung, Eui-Ryoung Han, Young-Jong Woo, Deiter Kevin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Korean
• Published: 한국의학교육학회 31.03.2016
• Subjects: 기타의약학; Clinical competence; Physician-patient relations; Medical history taking; Epistemological beliefs; Physical examination
• ISSN: 2005-727X; 2005-7288

Purpose: This study was to explore the relationship between clinical performance examination (CPX) achievement and epistemological beliefs to investigate the potentials of epistemological beliefs in ill-structured medical problem solving tasks. Methods: We administered the epistemological beliefs questionnaire (EBQ) to fourth-year medical students and correlated the results with their CPX scores. The EBQ comprised 61 items reflecting five belief systems: certainty of knowledge, source of knowledge, rigidity of learning, ability to learn, and speed of knowledge acquisition. The CPX included scores for history taking, physical examination, and patient-physician interaction. Results: The higher epistemological beliefs group obtained significantly higher scores on the CPX with regard to history taking and patient-physician interaction. The epistemological beliefs scores on certainty of knowledge and source of knowledge were significantly positively correlated with patient-physician interaction. The epistemological beliefs scores for ability to learn were significantly positively correlated with those for history taking, physical examination, and patient-physician interaction. Conclusion: Students with more sophisticated and advanced epistemological beliefs stances used more comprehensive and varied approaches in the patient-physician interaction. Therefore, educational efforts that encourage discussions pertaining to epistemological views should be considered to improve clinical reasoning and problem-solving competence in the clinic setting. KCI Citation Count: 0