The Impact of integrated teaching on Students' Learning

Background: Integration of various related subjects during medical education is one of the proposed strategies to overcome this problem. The present study was conducted to assess the effect of integrative teaching on medical student attitudes and knowledge about infection diseases. Methods: This quasi-experimental study conducted in infectious ward of Valia-e-asr hospital of birjand university medical of sciences. A total of 60 medical students (stagers) were randomly selected and divided in two control and experimental groups. The two groups were matched based on their mark, age and gender. By the same token, an integrated teaching method was performed in the experimental group by 4 faculty members from epidemiology, microbiology, infectious diseases, and pharmacology disciplines. Knowledge of the students was assessed by a written exam and their attitude was obtained using questionnaire. Data were entered into SPSS software (v. 16) and analyzed using paired and independent sample T-test. Results: The participants were 60 individuals in which 52% were males. The mean score in the cognitive-emotional domain was neither correlated to students’ gender nor significantly different before (p= 0.12) and after (p= 0.25) the intervention (congnetive: p-value=0.12, emotional: p-value=0.25). The students’ final learning scores were markedly higher in the integrated teaching than that of the traditional method (16.16±1.17 vs 14.12±1.73) (p-value =0.001).