As medical studies and research advance, students in many areas of education are faced with the question of which textbook is right for them.
In a new survey of about 1,000 medical science students, researchers at the University of California at San Francisco found that the majority of them prefer a text that offers more details on the physiology and pathophysiology of their disease.
The survey was published online by the journal Health Affairs, and the findings are likely to have a huge impact on how the medical profession views the value of its textbooks, which in turn may influence the course of many patients.
It’s been a long time comingThe majority of the medical students surveyed chose to choose a textbook that offered information on specific research questions and treatments, said lead author Andrea LeBlanc, a doctoral candidate in the UC San Francisco School of Medicine.
The majority of students were also surveyed about their preference for a particular textbook.
The researchers did not measure the content of the textbooks.
LeBlanc said that while the majority favored a text based on research findings, the authors found that a majority also preferred to have an explanation of the specific treatment or diagnostic criteria for a disease, which is similar to what is taught in the medical school.
“They just wanted to have that information in the textbook,” LeBlanch said.
“And they felt like that was a way to do that.”
“It was very helpful for them to have it in their hand so they could do research and be able to understand what was being said and how to apply it,” she added.
Leblanc said her team was particularly interested in students who are already familiar with the basics of medicine and wanted to help them better understand the latest advances in the field.
The study is the first to look at this kind of information in medical science textbooks.
For the last two decades, a number of textbooks have been published with research and clinical information that is more specific and more detailed than what is currently available in medical school curricula.
LeBlann said the survey also included a question on the content and the content that students had to explain to themselves.
The majority chose to describe the pathophysiological mechanisms and outcomes of the disease they were studying.
In this way, the textbooks provided students with a more personalized understanding of the diseases they were researching.
The authors of the survey, who were all students at UCSF, said they hoped their findings would encourage more students to choose textbooks that offer more detailed information about their research.
“We’re all really interested in making sure that we have a textbook available that we can all look at and know that we’re doing everything that’s necessary to help us understand our disease, and that we are understanding our disease in the most appropriate way possible,” said co-author Stephanie Dyer, a postdoctoral fellow in the UCSF School of Engineering.
The findings are also likely to encourage medical schools to revise their textbooks in an attempt to increase the number of students who can access the information.
Leblanc and Dyer noted that they would like to see more information about the research being done in a textbook, and they also hoped that textbooks could be more flexible in offering students the ability to choose between several versions of the same textbook.
“I think that that’s a really important part of medical education,” Leblan said.
“The way that medical schools teach medical science and that medical students study it, it’s all based on how we’re taught to think and how we think of ourselves.
And we don’t want to get in the habit of just presenting the same material that everybody else is going to get,” she said.
