Medical students' perspectives on biomedical informatics learning objectives

Abstract

Objectives: To explore medical student perspectives regard-ing the importance of biomedical informatics learning objectives to career development, and the amount of emphasis that should be placed on content associated with these objectives in the curriculum. Methods: A Web-based survey was e-mailed to 405 students enrolled at the University of Utah, School of Medicine in spring 2008. Respondents rated the importance of biomedical informatics learning objectives using a five-point Likert-type scale, and indicated whether this content should be given a minimal, moderate or large amount of emphasis. ANOVA and the Kruskal-Wallis test were conducted to determine differences in perceived im-portance and desired emphasis by academic year. Results: A total of 259 medical students submitted a survey for an overall response rate of 63.9%. Learning objectives associated with the physician role of Clinician received the highest overall rating (mean = 3.29 ± 0.47). Objectives for the physician roles of Clinician, Life-long Learner and Manager received higher ratings than the Educa-tor/Communicator and Researcher roles in terms of both perceived importance and amount of emphasis. Student ratings of importance varied significantly by academic year, with third-year students consistently assigning lower ratings to learning objectives for the Educator/Communicator, Researcher and Manager roles compared to students in some other years. Conclusions: Study results suggest that biomedical infor-matics content is desired by medical students at the Univer-sity of Utah. Study findings are being used to inform efforts to integrate biomedical informatics content into the cur-riculum and may assist other medical schools seeking to incorporate similar content.