The role of debriefing in clinical skill teaching and its application

Objective To explore the role and application potential of debriefing in clinical skill teaching. Methods Fifty-three students from Eight-year program of clinical medicine of Grade 2014 in Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology are collected as the experimental group, another 43 students from Eight-year program of clinical medicine of Grade 2013 as the control group. The experimental group adopted the teaching mode of debriefing and the control group received the traditional teaching mode. By the end of training sessions, the differences between the two groups in both the skill assessments and the theories were compared. A satisfaction survey about the debriefing was made in the experimental group. Results The scores of theoretical assessment in experimental group was (78.32±1.55). The scores of skill assessments was (94.76±0.18). The difference of the skill assessment scores between the experimental group and the control group was statistically significant (P<0.05). The questionnaire survey in the experimental group showed that the debriefing teaching method could improve the ability of independent learning 92.3%(48/52) and increase the learning efficiency 86.5%(45/52). Conclusions The application of debriefing significantly improved the outcome of clinical skill training, as compared to the traditional teaching mode. Key words: Debriefing; Teaching method; Clinical skills teaching; Eight-year program medical students