Online Poster Portal

Background:

Based on previous Internal Medicine clerkship student feedback, a common request has been to implement a workshop or asynchronous material regarding interpretation of patient laboratory values. One of the core responsibilities of medical students during the rotation is to assess daily morning labs and compare the laboratory trends of hospitalized patients. A 2014 status report from 98 U.S. medical school reported that barriers to formal laboratory medicine curriculum was mostly due to lack of sufficient time during the preclinical period (Smith et al., 2016). This highlights a gap in implementing laboratory education into medical school curriculum. This project will be essential in introducing this skill for second-year medical students before beginning their Internal Medicine rotation, specifically in bridging the difficult concept of acid-base disorders. 

Objective:

 The aim of this study is to evaluate whether asynchronous modules improve both competency and learner confidence in approaching acid–base disorders among pre-internal medicine clerkship students.

Methods: 

This study implemented a pre and post-interventional design to evaluate the effectiveness of the asynchronous learning module on acid–base disorders. The study population consisted of second-year pre-clerkship medical students preparing to begin their Internal Medicine rotation. Participants completed a pre-intervention survey assessing baseline comfort with acid–base concepts using a five-point Likert scale. Three case-based questions were created using OpenEvidence to assess competency in approaching different key concepts in acid-base clinical scenarios. The clinical vignettes were reviewed by faculty to ensure accuracy. Following completion of the asynchronous module, participants completed a post-intervention survey using the same measures. Participation was voluntary, responses were collected anonymously, and results had no impact on students’ clerkship evaluations. Data collection is ongoing and will be presented using bar charts showing average comfort levels and knowledge-based performance before and after the intervention.

Results: 

Data collection is still ongoing and will focus on analyzing the pre and post intervention responses. The self-reported comfort levels will be summarized using mean scores and compared before and after completion of the module. Performance on the three case-based knowledge will be evaluated and statistically analyzed through an unpaired t-test where mean scores will be used to trend competency before and after completion of the module.

Conclusions:

Although data analysis is still ongoing, this project aims to assess if an asynchronous learning module could improve confidence and competency when approaching acid-base disorders among second-year pre-clinical Internal Medicine students. Preliminary expectations propose that early exposure to case-based scenarios may enhance understanding and reduce perceived difficulty. However, an important limitation to consider is the timing of assessments: the asynchronous module and pre-survey are administered before the Internal Medicine clerkship, while the post-survey is completed during the clerkship. This makes it challenging to determine whether changes in comfort level are attributable to the module itself or to clinical exposure and practice during the clerkship, and this distinction will need to be further parsed out in the analysis. An essential factor to support the findings of the study will be based on student feedback, which will guide future implementation and refinement of the module. Ultimately, this project may contribute to bridging the gap between preclinical learning and real-world applications before entering the Internal Medicine clerkship.