文摘

Background Biomedical Informatics (BMI) education in medical schools is developing a sound curricular base, but there are few published reports of their educational usefulness. The goal of this paper is to assess knowledge change and satisfaction in medical students after a BMI curriculum. Methods The National Autonomous University of México Faculty of Medicine (UNAM) recently implemented a curricular reform that includes two BMI sequential courses (BMI-1 and BMI-2). The research design was one-group pretest-posttest. An objective test with evidence of validity was used for knowledge measurement. A satisfaction questionnaire was applied at the end of the courses. Two-tailed paired Student’s t-tests were applied, comparing knowledge scores in the pre and post-test for each course. Results The study included student cohorts during two consecutive academic years. The 2013 BMI-1 course (n--86 students) knowledge pretest score was 43.0?±-.6 (mean percent correct?±?SD), and the post-test score was 57.7?±-0.3 (p--.001); the 2014 BMI-1 (n--07) pretest score was 43.7?±-.5, and the post-test was 58.1?±-0.5 (p--.001). The 2012 BMI-2 course (n--83) pretest score was 26.3?±-.9, the post-test score was 44.3?±-3.3 (p--.001); the 2013 BMI-2 (n--26) pretest score was 27.5?±-.5, and the post-test was 42.0?±-1.0 (p--.001). The overall opinion of the students regarding the course was from good to excellent, with a response rate higher than 90%. The satisfaction questionnaires had high reliability (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.93). Conclusions The study shows a significant increase in BMI knowledge after an educational intervention in four medical student cohorts, and an overall positive evaluation by the students. Long-term follow-up is needed, as well as controlled studies of BMI educational interventions using performance endpoints.