A peer-education based disaster medicine course to turn medical students into a useful resource

AbstractIntroduction alian medical curriculum lacks a multidisciplinary disaster medicine course. The purposes of the present research were to verify whether a peer-education based disaster medicine training programme addressed to medical students could be effective in improving their knowledge of this topic. s ntents of the “In-hospital disaster response and rescue” training programme refer to three thematic areas concerning medical, technical and psychological/social issues. The topics were chosen with the aim of providing students with both technical and non-technical skills about disaster medicine through a peer-education based course. A “Knowledge Test” and an “Attitude Test” were submitted to the participants, who formed the experimental group, and to a control group composed of medical students who had not attended the course. Pre- and post-test course scores were analysed and compared. s ndred and twenty-five students took part in the course. Forty-four of them were included in the present research and compared to an equivalent control group of students. There was no significant difference either in the Attitude or in the Knowledge pre-test scores obtained by the control group and the experimental group (Attitude: 44.48 vs. 44.07 p>0.05 and Knowledge: 8.34 vs. 8.02 p>0.05). Post-test scores were lower in the control group than in the experimental group (Attitude: 45.07 vs. 50.16 and Knowledge: 9.40 vs. 20.10) and the comparison between pre- and post-test scores showed a significant difference between the control group and the experimental group (Attitude: 0.59<6.09 p:0.000 and Knowledge: 1.05<12.08 p:0.000). sion aining programme proved its efficacy in improving medical students׳ knowledge of disaster medicine. Peer-education resulted to be an effective teaching technique in transmitting the contents of the course to the students.