Developmental Delay? Graduating Medical Students’ Knowledge of Child Development
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract BACKGROUND: Knowledge of child development is fundamental to medical practice. Previous studies have demonstrated gaps in knowledge and training among trainees and practicing physicians. We conducted a longitudinal study of medical students’ knowledge of child development. Previously, we reported that students’ knowledge of developmental milestones was poor at baseline, did not improve after preclinical teaching and improved marginally after pediatrics clerkship. Here, we report the report the data on graduating medical students. OBJECTIVES: The present study aimed to describe graduating medical students’ knowledge of developmental milestones in comparison to their baseline knowledge. A secondary aim was to compare graduating students' knowledge to that of the general population. DESIGN/METHODS: We assessed medical students' knowledge of developmental milestones using a previously published 17-item questionnaire. Milestones were categorized as motor or non-motor. Students were surveyed at the start of medical school in Year 1 and prior to graduation in Year 4. Changes in students' scores were assessed using paired t-tests. Graduating medical students were compared to a published general population sample using t-tests. RESULTS: 56 students completed the survey in both Years 1 and 4 (33% of entering class). Overall, students’ percentage of correct answers increased from 24% at baseline to 32% at graduation (p<0.001). Knowledge of motor milestones did not change significantly between Years 1 and 4. Knowledge of non-motor milestones improved significantly between Years 1 and 4 (p<0.001). 85 medical students completed the questionnaire in Year 4 (50% of entering class). Compared to a sample of the general population (n=1198), graduating medical students answered 1.0 more questions correctly out of 17 (p<0.001). Students’ knowledge of non-motor milestones was greater than that of the general population (p<0.001). Knowledge of motor milestones did not differ significantly. CONCLUSION: Medical students' knowledge of developmental milestones improved only modestly over the course of their undergraduate medical education. At graduation, their knowledge of developmental milestones was marginally better than that of the general population. This level of knowledge is likely insufficient for generalist practice. At the undergraduate level, curricular improvements including innovative teaching strategies and greater student engagement are likely necessary to remediate this knowledge gap. Pediatricians supervising medical students and residents should not assume that trainees have an adequate knowledge of normal child development and may wish to highlight the developmental achievements of typically developing children as part of their clinical teaching.
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 | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
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".