To investigate the impact of integrating the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle with the case-based learning (CBL) model in clinical practice teaching in Hematology. This retrospective cohort study included sixty clinical medical students who completed their internship in the Department of Hematology at the Second Hospital of Lanzhou University from July 2024 to July 2025. Students were assigned to either the control group (traditional teaching, n = 30) or the experimental group (PDCA-CBL model, n = 30) based on their internship batch. Multiple myeloma (MM) was used as the teaching case for both groups. In the experimental group, the 4-week internship was structured to implement four successive PDCA cycles, with each cycle lasting one week and featuring progressively increasing case complexity. All students participated in every cycle, with formative assessments conducted at the end of each cycle. At the end of the overall internship, both groups completed a summative examination and a teaching satisfaction survey. The experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in theoretical knowledge (88.27 ± 6.48 vs 83.03 ± 6.52), case analysis (91.17 ± 4.75 vs 81.87 ± 5.77), and comprehensive performance (86.17 ± 6.80 vs 78.83 ± 5.79) ( P 0.05). Within the experimental group, as the PDCA cycles progressed sequentially, theoretical knowledge, case analysis and overall performance demonstrated significant upward trends ( P < 0.0001 for all). Although the overall comparison of skills across the four cycles reached statistical significance (F = 3.92, P < 0.05), the effect size was smaller than that observed for cognitive domains. Additionally, the experimental group reported significantly higher teaching satisfaction compared to the control group ( P < 0.05). The PDCA-CBL teaching model significantly enhances students' theoretical knowledge, clinical reasoning, and comprehensive abilities through continuous iterative improvement, thereby improving the effectiveness of clinical teaching in the department of hematology.
Li et al. (2026) studied this question.