BACKGROUND: Genetic testing rapidly penetrates into all medical specialties and medical students must acquire skills in this area. However, many of them consider it difficult. Furthermore, many find these topics less appealing and not connected to their future specialization in different fields of clinical medicine. Student-centred strategies such as problem-based learning, gamification and the use of real data can increase the appeal of a difficult topic such as genetic testing, a field at the crossroads of genetics, molecular biology and bioinformatics. METHODS: We designed an electronic teaching application which students registered in the undergraduate Medical Biology course can access online. A study was carried out to assess the influence of implementation of the new method. We performed pretest/posttest evaluation and analyzed the results using the sign test with median values. We also collected students' personal comments. RESULTS: The newly developed interactive application simulates the process of molecular genetic diagnostics of a hereditary disorder in a family. Thirteen tasks guide students through clinical and laboratory steps needed to reach the final diagnosis. Genetics and genomics are fields strongly dependent on electronic databases and computer-based data analysis tools. The tasks employ publicly available internet bioinformatic resources used routinely in medical genetics departments worldwide. Authenticity is assured by the use of modified and de-identified clinical and laboratory data from real families analyzed in our previous research projects. Each task contains links to databases and data processing tools needed to solve the task, and an answer box. If the entered answer is correct, the system allows the user to proceed to the next task. The solving of consecutive tasks arranged into a single narrative resembles a computer game, making the concept appealing. There was a statistically significant improvement of knowledge and skills after the practical class, and most comments on the application were positive. A demo version is available at https://medbio.lf2.cuni.cz/demo_m/ . Full version is available on request from the authors. CONCLUSIONS: Our concept proved to be appealing to the students and effective in teaching medical molecular genetics. It can be modified for training in the use of electronic information resources in other medical specialties.

Department of Biology and Medical Genetics Charles University 2nd Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Motol 5 Uvalu 84 150 06 Prague Czech Republic

Department of Teaching and Didactics of Biology Charles University Faculty of Science Prague Czech Republic

Zobrazit více v PubMed

Feero WG, Green ED. Genomics education for health care professionals in the 21st century. JAMA. 2011;306(9):989–990. doi: 10.1001/jama.2011.1245. PubMed DOI

Wolyniak MJ, Bemis LT, Prunuske AJ. Improving medical students’ knowledge of genetic disease: a review of current and emerging pedagogical practices. Adv Med Educ Pract. 2015;6:597–607. doi: 10.2147/AMEP.S73644. PubMed DOI PMC

Tognetto A, Michelazzo MB, Ricciardi W, Federici A, Boccia S. Core competencies in genetics for healthcare professionals: results from a literature review and a Delphi method. BMC Med Educ. 2019;19(1):19. doi: 10.1186/s12909-019-1456-7. PubMed DOI PMC

Demmer LA, Waggoner DJ. Professional medical education and genomics. Annu Rev Genomics Hum Genet. 2014;15(1):507–516. doi: 10.1146/annurev-genom-090413-025522. PubMed DOI

Ziv A, Wolpe PR, Small SD, Glick S. Simulation-based medical education: an ethical imperative. Acad Med. 2003;78(8):783–788. doi: 10.1097/00001888-200308000-00006. PubMed DOI

Prober CG, Heath C. Lecture halls without lectures — a proposal for medical education. N Engl J Med. 2012;366(18):1657–1659. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1202451. PubMed DOI

Coret A, Boyd K, Hobbs K, Zazulak J, McConnell M. Patient narratives as a teaching tool: a pilot study of first-year medical students and patient educators affected by intellectual/developmental disabilities. Teach Learn Med. 2018;30(3):317–327. doi: 10.1080/10401334.2017.1398653. PubMed DOI

Waggoner DJ, Martin CL. Integration of internet-based genetic databases into the medical school pre-clinical and clinical curriculum. Genet Med Off J Am Coll Med Genet. 2006;8(6):379–382. PubMed

Bean LJ, Fridovich-Keil J, Hegde M, Rudd MK, Garber KB. The virtual diagnostic laboratory: A new way of teaching undergraduate medical students about genetic testing. Genet Med. 2011;13(11):973–977. doi: 10.1097/GIM.0b013e318225ac13. PubMed DOI

Machluf Y, Yarden A. Integrating bioinformatics into senior high school: design principles and implications. Brief Bioinform. 2013;14(5):648–660. doi: 10.1093/bib/bbt030. PubMed DOI

Kilgour JM, Grundy L, Monrouxe LV. A rapid review of the factors affecting healthcare students’ satisfaction with Small-group. Active Learning Methods Teach Learn Med. 2016;28(1):15–25. doi: 10.1080/10401334.2015.1107484. PubMed DOI

Pantazos K, Lauesen S, Lippert S. Preserving medical correctness, readability and consistency in de-identified health records. Health Informatics J. 2017;23(4):291–303. doi: 10.1177/1460458216647760. PubMed DOI

Makransky G, Bonde MT, Wulff JSG, Wandall J, Hood M, Creed PA, et al. Simulation based virtual learning environment in medical genetics counseling: an example of bridging the gap between theory and practice in medical education. BMC Med Educ. 2016;16(1):98. doi: 10.1186/s12909-016-0620-6. PubMed DOI PMC

Pettit RK, McCoy L, Kinney M, Schwartz FN. Student perceptions of gamified audience response system interactions in large group lectures and via lecture capture technology. BMC Med Educ. 2015;15(1):92. doi: 10.1186/s12909-015-0373-7. PubMed DOI PMC

McCoy L, Lewis JH, Dalton D. Gamification and multimedia for medical education: a landscape review. J Am Osteopath Assoc. 2016;116(1):22–34. doi: 10.7556/jaoa.2016.003. PubMed DOI

Miller AS, Cafazzo JA, Seto E. A game plan: Gamification design principles in mHealth applications for chronic disease management. Health Informatics J. 2016;22(2):184–193. doi: 10.1177/1460458214537511. PubMed DOI

Machluf Y, Gelbart H, Ben-Dor S, Yarden A. Making authentic science accessible—the benefits and challenges of integrating bioinformatics into a high-school science curriculum. Brief Bioinform. 2017;18(1):145–159. doi: 10.1093/bib/bbv113. PubMed DOI PMC

Cook DA. If you teach them, they will learn: why medical education needs comparative effectiveness research. Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract. 2012;17(3):305–310. doi: 10.1007/s10459-012-9381-0. PubMed DOI