Successful teaching of pediatric fluid management using computer methods

Objectives: To identify and measure differences in knowledge of pediatric f luid management procedures between students taught by computer tutorial and others taught by lecture or seminar. Design: Cohort analytic study. Setting: Two community-based medical school pediatric teaching services. Participants: Eighty-nine third-year medical students with no prior pediatr ic fluid management experience. Interventions: Forty-eight students at one community campus completed a mic rocomputer-based tutorial program that replaced all teaching sessions in pe diatric fluid management. Forty-one students from a similar community campu s were taught identical content by a pediatric critical care specialist usi ng a seminar, reading material, and handouts. Main Outcome Measures: Scores on 2 free-answer problems on treatment of a d ehydrated child, which were graded by a single evaluator blinded to the tea ching method used, and scores on a 20-item multiple-choice examination. Results: The computer instruction group achieved significantly higher test scores than the seminar group for both the multiple-choice examination (81. 1% vs 62.2%; P<.001) and the free-answer test (85.4% vs 61.0%; P<.001). Conclusions: The computer tutorial in fluid therapy has been an effective m eans of meeting the defined objectives of the pediatric clerkship. Compared with traditional methods, students taught using the computer achieved sign ificantly higher scores on tests of both factual knowledge and practical pr oblem solving.