Can preclinical medical students be integrated into the continuing medical education process by instructing prehospital care providers?

Objective: To develop a model introducing medical students (MS) to the continuing medical education (CME) process while simultaneously developing a curriculum to enhance the relevant surgical anatomy knowledge base of the advanced prehospital care provider. Methods: A CME curriculum for teaching human anatomy was developed and approved by the governing state agencies for prehospital education. The curriculum focused on structures relevant to the prehospital care of the trauma patient in a case based format using common scenarios presented by surgery and emergency medicine faculty. Five year-one medical students who completed gross anatomy served as teaching staff and were given a structures list one week prior to the CME course. Human cadavers were prosected by the medical students prior to the CME program under the guidance of the surgical faculty. Course attendees and medical student staff were anonymously surveyed at the end of the program (rating scale 1 = low to 5 = high). Prehospital providers were given a multiple-choice posttest and surveyed at 3 months after the course with regard to applicability to their current practice. Data are means ± SD. Results: Nineteen licensed practicing paramedics attended the course. All of the paramedics scored above the 85% passing cutoff on the posttest (95.6% ± 6.2%). Instructor qualities were rated highly (4.62 ± 0.49) with no instructor rating less than a 3. MS believed themselves well prepared to teach (5 ± 0), and spent 2 ± 0.81 hours in preparation. They were only infrequently faced with questions they were not well prepared to answer (1.25 ± 0.5) and would uniformly participate in CME offerings in the future (5 ± 0). The CME program improved the MS view of CME (3 ± 0), prehospital education (3 ± 1.4), and the surgeon as educator (3.25 ± 1.5). At 3 months, the paramedics felt that the CME program significantly impacted the care they rendered (4.37 ± 0.76), and improved their understanding of injury complexes (4.53 ± 0.61), and resuscitation (4.26 ± 0.73). The cadaver course was uniformly recommended to coworkers (5 ± 0). Conclusions: This model provided prehospital care providers direct contact with clinically relevant human anatomy, enhanced their understanding of pertinent anatomy, and positively impacted their patient care. MS were introduced to the CME process and found it to be one with which they would become reinvolved. Furthermore, the MS felt prepared to present human anatomy, met the expectations of the course attendees, improved their understanding of prehospital education, and positively altered their perception of the surgeon as an educator. This process holds promise as both a model for prehospital education and as a tool for integrating MS into the role of allied health educator early in their career.