Anita Gaule1 , Deepali Bhagwan Aendole2 , Aditi Sood3 , Pushpa A. Pazare4
BACKGROUND Organ donation program in India is still in its infancy. Lack of adequate awareness, correct information, universal rules and guidelines, regarding organ donation and brain death is partially responsible for the same. Currently, didactic lectures are the method of choice to get across a large amount of theoretical information to a large group of learners at one time. However, there is no consensus as to the best teaching and learning methods for medical students. Using the important concept of brain death and organ donation, the present study aims at comparing the effectiveness of self-explanatory video to a lecture using power point presentation using a self-administered questionnaire. METHODS First year MBBS students were divided into two groups namely, ‘Lecture’ group and ‘Video’ group. A self-administered questionnaire of 11 themes, consisting of 43 questions, with response either as right / wrong / don't know, or agree / disagree / don't know, or yes / no / no comments, was used in the study. At baseline (before the intervention), students of the two groups were asked to fill out the questionnaire. Then students in one group were delivered a lecture on brain death and organ donation using power-point presentation and the other group were shown a video regarding the same. Once the teaching-learning sessions were conducted, the same questionnaire was again given to the students to respond. RESULTS Both teaching methods demonstrated a significant improvement in scores. At baseline, both the groups had similar scores. However, post-intervention, the lecture group showed better scores in the three themes, while video group had better scores in one theme. Also, a significantly improved change of score was observed for lecture group for four themes and only for one theme in the video group. CONCLUSIONS Organ donation and brain death is a vast topic and it is recommended that its various sub-topics be taught employing both lectures and video assisted teaching methods. Video assistance can be used to complement the lectures and not to replace the traditional teaching method.
