Teaching Approach to Tachycardia and Bradycardia in Medical Students: A Quasi-Experimental Study to Compare Team-Based Learning and Lecture Method

It is crucial to find ways to improve the durability of learning in clinical units. One of these methods is team-based learning (TBL). This learning method is active and students must study the subject before the session. 

This study examined TBL and compared it with conventional lecture method (LM) in an educational approach to tachycardia and bradycardia in adult patients. 

In this quasi-experimental study, medical students (interns) were randomly divided into two groups of TBL and LM. Two faculty members of emergency medicine were responsible for teaching in both LM and TBL groups. Data collection tool was a checklist including demographic information and a researcher-made questionnaire for assessing knowledge about tachycardia and bradycardia in adult patients. Two sets of questions with the same difficulty were designed to be used for pre-test and post-test. Both groups completed pre-test and post-test, which were finally compared. 

Totally 65 medical interns with the mean age of 28.75±2.26 years were participated of whom 37 persons (56.9%) were female. There was no significant difference in terms of the mean age of the participants in the two groups (p=0.914). The two groups were also matched in terms of male/female ratio (p=0.416). There was no significant difference between TBL and LM groups regarding pre-test score (p=0.935). However, they were significantly different in post-test (p=0.001) when TBL group scored higher than the LM group. 

Based on the research findings, it seems that TBL was more effective than LM on students' understanding of approach to tachycardia and bradycardia in adult patients.