Evaluation of a Biomedical Informatics course for medical students: a pre-posttest study at UNAM Faculty of Medicine in Mexico

• Published in: BMC medical education 2015-04, Vol.15 (1), p.64-64, Article 64
• Main Authors: Sánchez-Mendiola, Melchor, Martínez-Franco, Adrián I, Lobato-Valverde, Marlette, Fernández-Saldívar, Fabián, Vives-Varela, Tania, Martínez-González, Adrián
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Attitude of Health Personnel; Cohort Studies; Curriculum; Decision Support Techniques; Developing Countries; Education, Medical; Educational Measurement; Faculty, Medical; Female; Humans; Male; Medical Informatics - education; Mexico; Models, Educational; Young Adult
• ISSN: 1472-6920; 1472-6920
• DOI: 10.1186/s12909-015-0349-7

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. 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. The study included student cohorts during two consecutive academic years. The 2013 BMI-1 course (n = 986 students) knowledge pretest score was 43.0 ± 8.6 (mean percent correct ± SD), and the post-test score was 57.7 ± 10.3 (p