Change in student attitudes to medical school after the introduction of problem‐based learning in spite of low ratings

Students' attitudes to, and opinions of, their studies at medical school were investigated with the help of a questionnaire. They were asked to what extent the medical school encouraged independent, critical thinking, problem‐solving skills, decision‐making, studying outside the textbook and other behaviours and skills that teachers in higher education usually put forward as important. It was found that students generally had a low opinion of the extent to which their education encouraged such virtues, mean figures ranging between 3·5 and 4·6 on a 10‐grade scale. The students felt that their studies to a large extent encouraged focus on details and preparation for examinations. The questionnaire was given to the students after 2½ years of traditional preclinical studies and at the end of the first clinical year. There were significant but numerically small differences for some of the items at the end of the year. However, when problem‐based learning (PBL) was introduced during the first clinical year, there was a substantial change: there were now significant and numerically larger differences for seven of the nine items, even though the students were asked to give their opinion of the whole of their time at medical school on both occasions, not only of the last year. There were no other changes in the curriculum or the teaching methods other than the introduction of PBL. The change in attitudes did not depend on the student's appreciation of PBL; students' opinion of PBL was low, indicating that most of them disliked it.