Medical Student Tulane University School of Medicine New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Introduction: Neurosurgical education has seen increasing discussions in the literature, highlighting significant variability in teaching methods and learning outcomes. Exploring the range of teaching methods awaiting debut in medical education may yield novel solutions to inconsistency in neurosurgery education. Precision Teaching (PT) is a well-established methodology, enumerating quantifiable measurement for educators to assess learning with objective granularity. Here we review the literature of PT in medical education.
Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted in compliance with PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis) Guidelines, using PubMed, Medline, and Google Scholar Databases. Keywords included: “precision teaching” and “medical training”. Articles implementing PT published between 2000 and 2022 were reviewed for inclusion. Articles were excluded if the population were not healthcare trainees/professionals (i.e. medical students, residents, nurses, or other clinical staff) or the outcomes measured were unrelated to clinical patient care.
Results: The initial search yielded 26 articles with three additional citations hand sourced, a total of 29 references for initial screening. Excluded among these were 25 references deviating from inclusion criteria or lack of full-text availability. Four references met all inclusion criteria and were reviewed in full. All four manuscripts were prospective studies, three of which compared PT outcomes in a sample of medical students, while the fourth targeted resident physicians. Assessment of Pre- and Post-PT intervention included test performance, as well as speed and accuracy during lumbar and venipuncture. In all four studies, PT outperformed knowledge and skill acquisition compared to standard teaching methods.
Conclusion : Precision Teaching has been successfully exploited in clinical skills development, albeit with very limited reports. Consistently across reports was greater skill and knowledge acquisition with PT compared to current teaching methods. Further investigation of PT in neurosurgery may objectively measure both knowledge and skill acquisition.
