A comparison between peer-assisted learning and self-study for electrocardiography interpretation in Thai medical students

Peer-assisted learning has been shown to be aneffective teaching and learning method. However, this techniquehas not been proven in Thai medical school. We aimed to comparethe effectiveness of peer-assisted learning and self-study ininterpreting an electrocardiogram in Thai medical students. This is a prospective, randomized controlled trial,conducted in Chonburi teaching hospital, a community hospitalaffiliated with Chulalongkorn University. All medical studentsfrom the fourth and fifth years, a total of eighty students, wererandomly assigned to two groups of peer-assisted learning(PAL) and self-study (SS) via stratified randomization doneby computer-generated randomization. The two groups werematched for sex and grade point average. In the PAL group,teaching was performed by the fourth and fifth year medicalstudents. We conducted five weekly study sessions. Differenttopics of electrocardiogram interpretation were assigned to tutorsfor teaching. SS group would separately study the same topic ontheir own. Constructed response questions were used to assessthe students at the beginning as a pre-test and after a five-weeksession as a post-test. Online self-assessment was delivered tostudents one month after the study. Mean pre-test and post-test score was put into theanalysis and compared across groups using t-test. No significantdifference in pre-test score was observed between the two groupsin the same academic year. There was a significant differencebetween the mean post-test score between the fourth year PALand SS groups. Also, the mean difference score in the fourth yearPAL group was higher than the fourth year SS group. However, inthe fifth year group, there was no significant difference betweenthe PAL and SS groups in the mean post-test score and meandifference score. In conclusion, peer-assisted learning is an interestingmethod to improve understanding and interpreting skills of basicECG better than self-study in the early clinical year medicalstudents.