A survey on the attitudes of Chinese medical students towards current pathology education

Abstract

Background: Pathology education provides information on pathology and guides students to become pathologists. Recently, the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China required the establishment of the system of 'High-quality Online and Offline Courses', which indicates that online courses will play an important role in higher education. Furthermore, the number of pathologists currently cannot satisfy clinical needs. To solve this health issue and implement the policy from the Ministry of Education, it is necessary to improve the current state of pathology education. First, we need to know students' opinions of the current courses and their professional choices.

Methods: Online questionnaires covering the quality of traditional courses, attitudes towards online courses, and suggestions for optimizing courses were designed and applied. Whether students want to become pathologists and the underlying reasons for this interest are also included in this survey. Participants are medical students from certain colleges in Nanjing. The collected data were assessed by statistical analyses, and p-values less than 0.05 were considered significant.

Results: Of the 342 valid responses, 60.94% of undergraduate students showed their interest in pathology courses, and among them, 48.72% expressed that they may become pathologists. However, the corresponding percentage is only 29.59% in the group without interest. To optimize curricula, the top two suggestions are introducing more clinical cases (undergraduate students, 64.45%; graduate students, 79.09%) and making the classes lively and interesting (undergraduate students, 59.77%; graduate students, 62.79%). Approximately 80.00% of students consider online courses to be good supplementary materials to traditional courses, and approximately half prefer an online-offline mixed learning model. Salary, interest, and employment status are the main factors influencing students' professional choices.

Conclusions: Students are generally satisfied with traditional pathology courses, and online courses are good supplementary materials in their opinions. It has been suggested that clinical cases be introduced in classes. It is more likely that students who have an interest in pathology will become pathologists. The data from this survey also show that the main causes of the shortage of pathologists are a lack of engaging work and an unsatisfactory salary.

Keywords: Chinese medical students; Pathology education; Professional choice; Survey; Traditional and online courses.

Fig. 1

Suggestions for optimizing traditional pathology courses. a Students’ evaluation of the quality of traditional pathology courses. The overall quality of traditional pathology courses was classified into four levels according to the normal scoring standards: Excellent (9–10 points), Good (8–9 points), Pass (6–8 points), and Fail (< 6 points). Every student chose one option based on his/her integrative evaluation. b Suggestions for optimizing traditional pathology courses. This is a multiple-choice question. Students were asked to choose whichever option they agreed with. The result is the ratio of students who chose the specific option to the total number of students

Fig. 2

The role of online courses in students’ opinions and their learning models. a A, B, C, and D indicate “An important supplement to traditional courses”, “Possible to instead of traditional courses”, “Only valuable to students with insufficient offline resources”, and “Just a stunt”, respectively. b The question is “Which of the following online courses have you ever attended?” “Both” means “I have attended online study of both specialized courses and unspecialized courses”, “Specialized” means “I just have attended online study of specialized courses”, “Unspecialized” means “I just have attended online study of unspecialized courses”, and “Neither” means “I have not attended online study of specialized courses or unspecialized courses”. c The question is “If contents of online pathology courses and offline/traditional pathology courses are the same, which learning model do you prefer?”. All these questions are single-choice questions. The data are the ratio of students who chose the specific option to the total number of students. * P < 0.05

Fig. 3

Factors influencing students’ professional choices. Students were asked to choose the three most important factors they consider when they decide their careers. a The result is the ratio of students who chose the specific option to the total number of students. b The data represent the percentage of students who chose option “Salary” or not in undergraduate students and graduate students. * P < 0.05

Fig. 4

Possible causes of the shortage of pathologists. A The question is “What are the possible factors that cause the shortage of pathologists in the clinic?”, and it is a multiple question for graduate students. B These are two questions for undergraduate students. B-a The question is “How much do you like Pathology subject?”. Options included “To a great extent”, “To some extent”, and “Not at all”. The result is the ratio of students who chose the specific option to the total number of students. B-b The question is “May you become a pathologist?”. The data are analyzed by the possibility of becoming a pathologist and the emotion on the pathology subject. ** P < 0.01