Evaluation of a new course to teach the principles and clinical applications of epidemiology to medical students.

A new short course to teach clinical medical students the principles of epidemiology and their applications to clinical practice was introduced at St. Thomas's Hospital Medical School. During the first year one half of the students took the new course. All the students also received the previous epidemiological teaching which was performed on the wards in the context of individual patients with a particular disease. In the next year all students were given only the new course. One year after attending these courses, students completed a questionnaire designed to test how well the course objectives had been met. A comparison was made between those who had received the new course and those who had received only ward round teaching. Students exposed to both the ward rounds and the course were more satisfied with the latter and had a greater appreciation of the importance of epidemiology to clinical practice than students receiving only ward rounds. This improvement was maintained in the subsequent year when the ward rounds were dropped. Students who had the new course also performed relatively better than the others in the Community Medicine multiple choice questions in the Medicine Finals examination, and the marks improved in the subsequent year. This evaluation was also useful in identifying those aspects of the course that need further development.