Bernard Hoerni

Value of attitude questionnaires for assessing oncology teaching of medical students: Experience of fondation Bergonié, Bordeaux

The importance of psychosocial aspects of cancer and cancer patients is now well recognized, but the means for teaching them to medical students and for assessing this teaching are not yet well established. The use of attitude questionnaires appears helpful after our experience over five years among more than 100 students observed during a four-month hospital course. After reviewing this experience we suggest ways to improve such questionnaires and to better include their use in a general assessment of teaching according to well-determined objectives. Such an assessment is necessary for improving education of medical students and for increasing their abilities to better meet the needs of future patients.

Evaluation of medical students’ hospital training: Interest of students’ essays

To evaluate the impact of teaching during hospital training in an adult cancer ward, 107 consecutive students were asked to freely select the chart of a patient representative of their course and to write comments on it, at the end of their course. Students selected charts of young patients rather than older ones (P less than 0.0001). Most of the patients had a poor prognosis (69%). Students frequently emphasized psychosocial aspects of cancer and patients information (patient-student relationship: 50%; diagnosis acceptance: 36%; information: 19%), but rarely considered post-treatment sequelae of cured patients (4%), palliative care (9%), and truth (10%). The selection of a large majority of poor prognosis patients led us to invite them to attend consultations to meet patients who are cured or in fair condition. Other topics must be emphasized (palliative care, truth, and post-treatment morbidity). Finally, such an evaluation provides good information on the course of the students and is easily performed and analysed.