Medical students learn better when taught using healthtalk.org patient videos according to research published by Rosamund Snow and others today in the journal ‘Medical Teacher.’

Snow et al taught two groups of medical undergraduates about the colposcopy procedure (a way of examining the cervix in detail). One group’s learning included videos from healthtalk.org of women explaining their experiences of the procedure. The control group saw videos of a clinician explaining the procedure. The group who viewed the videos of patients explaining the procedure did significantly better in their exams and said that they felt more confident than those in the control group in areas such as discussing the procedure with patients and feeling able to respond to a patients’ emotional reaction to hearing about the procedure.

We at healthtalk.org have heard a lot of anecdotal evidence over the years that our videos are useful in teaching and learning, but this is the first attempt we are aware of to quantify this. We are beyond thrilled with these results and hope to see more work of this kind in future.

Article reference: Rosamund Snow, Joanna Crocker, Katherine Talbot, Jane Moore & Helen Salisbury (2016) Does hearing the patient perspective improve consultation skills in examinations? An exploratory randomized controlled trial in medical undergraduate education, Medical Teacher,38:12, 1229-1235, DOI: 10.1080/0142159X.2016.1210109

View the full article (paywall) https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0142159X.2016.1210109