The evaluation of the effectiveness of an integrated case-based learning program in pathology education to medical students at QUMS

Studies have shown that student-centered practices and the integration of relevant courses increase the quality of teaching and learning. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of problem-based teaching method for presentation of pathology course.

 In this interventional and semi-experimental study, the part of pathology course teaching was performed traditionally and other parts of it presented with clinical cases and problem-based methods for 75 medical students of Qazvin University of Medical Sciences. In both cases, a pre-test was performed. At the end of the teaching, as well as two weeks after training, the students were evaluated by re-examination. Differences between the mean scores of these two methods were analyzed by a statistical test.

 Out of 75 students, 37 were 49.3% male and the rest were females. The scores obtained from the two methods showed that the mean scores of the students in the post-test and the test two weeks after the training in the problem-based method were statistically significantly different from the traditional method (p < 0.0001). It also increased students' satisfaction with education.

These results indicate that pathology teaching with clinical cases and through a problem-based approach improves students' average scores and satisfaction.