JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Forensic medicine requires background medical knowledge and the ability to apply it to legal cases. Medical students have different levels of medical knowledge and are therefore likely to perform differently in learning forensic medicine. However, different medical curricula in Thailand deliver this course at different stages of medical study, mostly in the clinical years and others in the preclinical years. This raises questions about the differences in learning effectiveness.

Objective:

To compare the learning outcomes of medical students in a curriculum that arranges to teach forensic medicine at the clinical level with the preclinical level.

Methods:

This was a 5-year retrospective study comparing multiple choice question scores in a forensic medicine course of fifth- and third-year medical students from different medical schools who were taught by the same instructors using similar content and evaluated by similar difficulty examinations. Of the 1,063 medical students included in the study, 782 were fifth-year clinical students and 281 were third-year preclinical students.

Results:

The average score of fifth-year medical students was 76.09%, compared to 62.94% for third-year students. The difference was statistically significant (p < 0.001, Kruskal-Wallis test). The average score of fifth-year medical students was significantly higher than that of third-year students in every academic year.

Conclusions:

Teaching forensic medicine during the preclinical years may be too early and students may not understand the clinical contents sufficiently. Attention should be paid to ensuring adequate clinical background before teaching subjects that require clinical application, especially in forensic medicine.