A systematic review of the methodological quality and outcomes of RCTs to teach medical undergraduates surgical and emergency procedures.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: There is no systematic review of the methodological quality of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of teaching surgical and emergency skills to undergraduates. METHODS: We searched the Cochrane Collaboration Controlled Trials Register, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, MEDLINE, EMBASE, ERIC, DARE and the University of Toronto Continuing Medical Education database for RCTs in all languages. RESULTS: We identified 19 RCTs. Four tested methods of IV access, 1 found intraosseous access faster than the umbilical vein in neonates, and 1 found that one type of intraosseous needle had higher success rates. Two RCTs of intubation skills did not identify a superior technique. One RCT of CPR found video instruction superior to the American Heart Association Heartsaver course. Of 2 RCTs of trauma skills, 1 found no improvement and 1 found improvement only on the day of instruction. One RCT found both computer and seminar training improved epistaxis management. One RCT gave students preoperative anatomy instruction, and they received higher ratings from surgeons. One RCT asked students to study surgical scenarios preoperatively, and they improved their surgical intensive care unit skills. One RCT gave students video and paper-cut instruction of the Whipple procedure; both groups improved, but there were no differences between groups. One RCT taught uteteroscopy and stone extraction and found groups that used low- and high-fidelity bench models improved, compared with the didactic group. Four of 5 RCTs of knot tying showed improvement. CONCLUSIONS: This systematic review assessed the quality of RCTs used in teaching undergraduates surgical and emergency skills. There are many positive study outcomes, but there are significant methodological weaknesses in the study design. Students varied in their skills, and most did not demonstrate optimal performance in any of the procedures. This review provides a baseline for further work important to both medical education and clinical practice.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.102 | 0.392 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.018 | 0.018 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.017 | 0.014 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".