Efficient undergraduate learning of liver transplant: building a framework for teaching subspecialties to medical students

Abstract Background Liver recipients may develop various diseases after transplant. However, because of inadequate study of liver transplant during undergraduate education, the quality of post-transplant care provided to these patients remains suboptimal. Herein, we introduce an innovative and integrated multimodal pedagogical approach to effectively disseminate key information regarding liver transplant to undergraduate students. The goal is to examine this approach through students’ assessment in multiple dimensions. Methods This prospective observational study evaluated student reactions to our pedagogical approach. Fifth-year medical students during the academic year 2015–2016 attended a 2-h session on what nontransplant doctors should know about liver transplants. The pedagogical strategy consisted of an online preclass self-learning exercise, an in-class interactive discussion (facilitated by the class teacher who is a liver transplant specialist to avoid distractions within the short-time frame), and a postclass essay assignment (to integrate and apply concepts). After the class, questionnaires were distributed to individual students to collect data, if returned, concerning the students’ learning experience and feedback to improve teaching quality. Descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U tests, chi-squared tests, and McNemar’s tests were used to analyze quantitative data. Qualitative data were content-coded through a descriptive approach using thematic analysis. Results Of the 266 attendees, 263 (98.9%) completed the questionnaires and 182 (69.2%) provided comments. Student feedback indicated they “felt better” and “more satisfied” compared with problem-based learning (PBL) (51.0 and 63.1%, respectively) or large-lecture class (92.0 and 88.6%, respectively) approaches. Regarding confidently managing liver transplant patients in future, 80 (30.4%) and 246 (93.5%) students expressed preclass and postclass confidence, respectively (p