Effectiveness of simulation-based clinical research curriculum for undergraduate medical students - a pre-post intervention study with external control

Simulation is widely utilized in medical education. Exploring the effectiveness of high-fidelity simulation of clinical research within medical education may inform its integration into clinical research training curricula, finally cultivating physician-scientist development.

Standard teaching scripts for both clinical trial and cross-sectional study simulation were designed. We recruited undergraduates majoring in clinical medicine at 3^th grade into a pre-post intervention study. Additionally, a cross-sectional survey randomly selected medical undergraduates at 4^th or 5^th grade, medical students in master and doctor degree as external controls. Self-assessment scores of knowledge and practice were collected using a 5-point Likert scale. Changes in scores were tested by Wilcoxon signed-rank test and group comparisons were conducted by Dunn’s tests with multiple corrections. Multivariable quantile regressions were used to explore factors influencing the changes from baseline.

Seventy-eight undergraduates involved the clinical trial simulation and reported improvement of 1.60 (95% CI, 1.48, 1.80, P < 0.001) in knowledge and 1.82 (95% CI, 1.64, 2.00, P < 0.001) in practice score. 83 undergraduates involved in the observational study simulation and reported improvement of 0.96 (95% CI, 0.79, 1.18, P < 0.001) in knowledge and 1.00 (95% CI, 0.79, 1.21, P < 0.001) in practice. All post-intervention scores were significantly higher than those of the three external control groups, P < 0.001. Higher agreement on the importance of clinical research were correlated with greater improvements in scores. Undergraduates in pre-post study showed high confidence in doing a future clinical research.

Our study provides evidence supporting the integration of simulation into clinical research curriculum for medical students. The importance of clinical research can be emphasized during training to enhance learning effect.