Dear Sir
Undergraduate ophthalmology education is limited to only seven days (Bayliss et al. Citation2011). This poses a threat to future eye-care. Innovative teaching methods must be introduced to support ophthalmic education. We developed a cataracts teaching video for medical students and evaluated its effectiveness and acceptability as a learning aid.
The entire patient pathway was filmed from ward to theatres, producing a 27 minute video demonstrating ocular anatomy and cataracts including its causes, effects and surgical treatment.
An online questionnaire was distributed to students from three London medical schools, inviting them to view the video and complete 23 knowledge-based questions, both before and after. The aim was to determine if viewing the video could improve knowledge of participants.
From 29 respondents, 28 (96.6%) improved their score post-video. The mean (SD) score pre-video was 14.45 (2.51) and post-video it was 19.48 (2.59). The mean percentage improvement was 37.2% (20.4) and this proved statistically significant (p < 0.001). It was higher for females, 41.7% (19.3), compared to males, 31.7% (21.2), for clinical year students, 38.4% (19.9), compared to pre-clinical students 32.4% (23.9) and for students who had not seen a cataract operation previously, 46.9% (17.2), compared to those who had already seen cataract surgery, 25.2% (18.1).
Majority of students “strongly agreed” or “agreed” that the video increased their knowledge (100%), was a useful learning aid (100%), was more informative than spending equivalent time in theatre (77.7%), was fun to learn from (92.6%), more videos should be created (92.6%) and used in undergraduate ophthalmology education (96.5%).
We have highlighted that teaching videos are effective at improving knowledge of medical students. The overwhelmingly positive feedback suggests that such videos can improve student motivation and interest.
The advantages of teaching videos include greater student control over their own learning, standardisation of teaching and improved efficiency of learning by focussing on important “bits of the action” through video editing. Research suggests that web-based learning is comparable but not superior to other educational methods (Chumley-Jones et al. Citation2002).
Delivering adequate ophthalmology teaching at undergraduate level is a challenge. E-learning could be used as a tool to enhance and support traditional teaching methods, in a way that would serve to increase efficiency of learning during the students’ limited exposure to this specialty.
U. Malik, E. Kirkby, V. Tah, C. Bunce, N. Okhravi, Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, London EC1V 2PD, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
References
- Baylis O, Murray PI, Dayan M. Undergraduate ophthalmology education – A survey of UK medical schools. Med Teach 2011; 33(6)468–471
- Chumley-Jones HS, Dobbie A, Alford CL. Web-based learning: Sound educational method or hype? A review of the evaluation literature. Acad Med 2002; 77: S86–S93