Effectiveness of undergraduate surgical teaching

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to replicate and improve a previous study on the teaching effectiveness of surgery at Caldas University School of Medicine, measured by the students' increase in knowledge after instruction relative to that before instruction. A 100-item questionnaire of the true-false type was used. There were materially and statistically significant increases in the students' post-instruction knowledge. The same questionnaire was also applied to the surgery residents, who showed a level of knowledge materially and statistically higher than that of the undergraduate students but lower than 50% of the "true" knowledge. This study shows the importance of evaluating surgical students' knowledge before and after instruction.