Peer‑assisted teaching method to foster learning physiological basis of electrocardiography among 1st year medical graduate students: An interventional study
Volume 9, Issue 3, March 2019, Pages 1-6
. Prathamesh Haridas Kamble, . Anupam Suhas Khare, . Shital Sopanrao Maske, . Gaurav Sharma, . Arun Narayan Kowale
Abstract INTRODUCTION: In peer‑assisted teaching (PAT) method, students are encouraged to prepare,
organize, and construct their learning program under the guidance of a teacher. The objective of the
present study is to assess the benefits and outcome of PAT on students’ understanding and knowledge
of one of the important and difficult topics, “physiological basis of electrocardiography (ECG).”
METHODS: A nonrandomized, interventional study was carried out in the department of physiology.
Five peer tutors were selected and trained in the basics of ECG by a senior faculty of physiology for
12–14 h sessions over the 6‑week period. These peer tutors then conducted a day‑long workshop
on five different subtopics of ECG, which was attended by 184 1st year medical students. Evaluation
of the workshop was done through pre/posttest 20‑item questionnaire score analysis and feedback
questionnaire using a 5‑point Likert scale items.
RESULTS: The average pre‑ and posttest scores were 6.6 ± 2.73 and 13.3 ± 4.73, respectively. The
average posttest scores were higher and statistically significant compared to pretest (R2
= 0.4275;
P < 0.05). The class average normalized gain (g) for a posttest score was 101.5%. Of 184 students,
9.7% of students had >70% improvement from the pretest score, and 44.78% had more than 50%
improvement in their posttest scores.
CONCLUSION: We received a predominantly positive feedback for the usefulness of peer teaching
as a learning method. Thus, PAT was found to be a feasible and effective way of teaching the difficult
concepts in physiology.