Case-based Sandwich Teaching Improves Communication Confidence of Eight-year Undergraduates: Treatment of Breast Cancer

  Objective  After micro-teaching, sandwich teaching method and case-based learning (CBL) method were successively applied to training eight-year clinical medical students and evaluating the effects of sandwich +CBL teaching in improving communication confidence.

  Methods  All medical students who studied in the eight-year clinical medicine of Peking Union Medical College and entered the surgery internship were selected as the research objects. Anonymous written questionnaire survey was conducted before and after micro-teaching, and after sandwich +CBL teaching to evaluate the trainees' score of communication confidence in 4 preset scenarios, and their feedback on the teaching mode was collected.

  Results  A total of 28 eight-year clinical medical interns were enrolled. After micro-teaching and sandwich +CBL teaching, thestudents' scores of communication confidence increased in the 4 preset scenarios, especially in the international conference scenario (P=0.009). After sandwich +CBL teaching, 26 students (92.8%) felt that the teaching method was helpful to improve their confidence. The optimal time ratio of the diversified teaching method to total teaching was 20% (chosen by 14 students), followed by 10% (chosen by 7 students) and 40% (chosen by 7 students).

  Conclusions  Combination of sandwich +CBL teaching and micro-teaching sequentially would improve the confidence of eight-year medical undergraduates in expression and communication during clerkship and be of potential value in surgical teaching.