Medical Students' attitudes toward basic sciences: influence of a primary care curriculum

The emerging popularity of family medicine and primary care among medical students with an attendant pressure for clinical relevance in pre-clinical coursework and early clinical exposure has raised questions in the minds of many academicians about the students' perceived value of basic sciences in such an educational environment. A comparison was made of attitudes toward the basic sciences between students in two, concurrent, pre-clinical medical school curricula at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. The conventional curriculum offers a teacher-centered, 2-year curriculum of basic sciences taught predominantly by basic scientists in a lecture format. The experimental curriculum entitled the Primary Care Curriculum (PCC), offers a student-centered, 2-year curriculum in which pertinent basic and clinical science learning is derive primarily from common, primary care, patient problems, discussed in small group tutorials. There are no formal lectures. Half the tutors are primary care clinicians, half basic scientists. Attitude scales were administered in two successive classes of students in both curricula at the beginning of the first and second terms of the first year. Increased cynicism toward the curriculum and its relevance to future practice was observed among conventional, but not among PCC students. This findings lends supports to the hypothesis that modification in educational methods in general and relevant, primary care experience in particular can favourably influence students' attitudes toward basic sciences.