This Is Not Brain Surgery: Increasing Neurosurgical Knowledge and Retention in Medical Students

Abstract

The high-pressured neurosurgical working environment, where the majority of the physicians’ time is spent in the operating room, leaves little time for teaching medical students. Yet, neurosurgical care and diagnosis is a field in which all medical students should be trained to an appropriate level, whatever specialization they choose to pursue as clinicians after graduating from medical school. After extensive literature review, this study created and implemented a two-week asynchronous, video-based curriculum for four key topics in neurosurgery (Intracranial Hemorrhage, Neuro-Imaging, Hydrocephalus and The Glasgow Coma Scale) for groups of Harvard Medical School MD-students in the Surgery Core Clerkship and Neurology Clerkship at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Knowledge and self-efficacy pre- and post-test scores were recorded and analyzed, and compared to collected learner analytics (e.g. number of views). Students who engaged with the curriculum significantly improved their knowledge test scores in all four content areas examined. The students who did not engage with the curriculum did not improve their knowledge scores from pre- to post-test. All students enrolled in the study (compliant and non-compliant) significantly improved their content-related self-efficacy. This study shows that a focused, asynchronous, video-based curriculum in neurosurgery has a significantly positive effect on knowledge and self-efficacy scores amongst undergraduate medical students. Future studies will aim to expand upon the conclusions from this study, improve learner compliance, and analyze learner analytics in further depth. This curriculum represents a viable and cost-effective opportunity to create a national neurosurgery curriculum for medical students.