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Web-based curriculum

A practical and effective strategy for teaching women’s health

  • Innovations In Education And Clinical Practice
  • Published:
Journal of General Internal Medicine Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To address the need for women’s health education by designing, implementing, and evaluating a self-study, web-based women’s health curriculum.

DESIGN: Cohort of students enrolled in the embulatory portion of the medicine clerkship with comparison group of students who had not yet completed this rotation.

PARTICIPANTS/SETTING: Third- and fourth-year medical students on the required medicine clerkship (115 students completed the curriculum; 158 completed patient-related logs).

INTERVENTION: Following an extensive needs assessment and formulation of competencies and objectives, we developed a web-based women’s health curriculum completed during the ambulatory portion of the medicine clerkship. The modules were case based and included web links, references, and immediate feedback on posttesting. We discuss technical issues with implementation and maintenance.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: We evaluated this curriculum using anonymous questionnaires, open-ended narrative comments, online multiple-choice tests, and personal digital assistant (PDA) logs of patient-related discussions of women’s health. Students completing the curriculum valued learning women’s health, preferred this self-directed learning over lecture, scored highly on knowledge tests, and were involved in more and higher-level discussions of women’s health with faculty (P<.001).

CONCLUSIONS: We present a model for the systematic design of a web-based women’s health curriculum as part of a medicine clerkship. The web-based instruction resolved barriers associated with limited curriculum time and faculty availability, provided an accessible and standard curriculum, and met the needs of adult learners (with their motivation to learn topics they value and apply this knowledge in their daily work). We hypothesize that our web-based curriculum spurred students to later-discuss these topics with faculty. Web-based learning may be particularly suited for women’s health because of its multi-disciplinary nature and need for vertical integration throughout medical school curricula.

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Correspondence to Jennifer R. Zebrack MD.

Additional information

There are no conflicts of interest by the authors.

This project was partially supported by a Learning Resources Grant from the Medical College of Wisconsin.

JGIM Abstract:

Zebrack JR, Mitchell JL, Davids SL, Keating-Christensen C. A women’s health web-site for learners at multiple levels. J Gen Intern Med. 2002;17:104.

Mitchell JL, Zebrack JR, Davids SL, Keating-Christensen C, Simpson DE. Students’ use of and satisfaction with e-based instruction: experience with an online women’s health curriculum. J Gen Intern Med. 2003;18:249–50.

Zebrack JR, Mitchell JL, Davids SL, Bragg D. The impact of an on-line women’s health curriculum on OSCE skills and clinical teaching encounters. J Gen Intern Med. 2003;18:260.

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Zebrack, J.R., Mitchell, J.L., Davids, S.L. et al. Web-based curriculum. J GEN INTERN MED 20, 68–74 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1525-1497.2005.40062.x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1525-1497.2005.40062.x

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