Effect of multimedia on the self learning of lung sound in medical students

Park, Myung Jae; Lee, Myung Goo; Kim, Dong Kyu; Mo, Eun Kyung; Hyun, In Gyu; Jung, Ki Suck

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Auscultation of lung sound is a fundamental component of physical examination of respiratory disease. It is difficult to teach lung sound to the medical student because of the observer variability and the lack of objective recording in auscultation. Multimedia education has became available in many fields due to rapid development of computer and its software. So we made multimedia program to teach the lung sound and evaluated the effect of this program on the self study of the lung sound by medical students. METHOD: We developed the multimedia title "Auscultation of lung sound" by integrating lung sounds, wave form display, radiographic findings and some explanations about various lung sounds including normal and abnormal lung sounds. Thirty students attending in the 2nd year of Medical school at the Hallym University was randomly divided into two groups. Each group studied on their own using either tape or multimedia title for one week. After the study, they were tested to describe the lung sound of real patients who were admitted to the Chun Cheon Sacred Heart Hospital. Multimedia group was asked to answer the questionnaire on multimedia title.
RESULTS
1) Test score of auscultation on real patients: The mean score of tape group and multimedia group was 1.20+/-1.08 and 1.54+/-0.74 respectively. But there was no significant difference between two groups (P=0.34). 2) Summary of questionnaire: Twelve out of 15(80%) students answered that multimedia title helped them to understand the lung sound and three students(20%) answered that this program was very helpful. For the visual display of wave form, eight out of 15(34%) students answered that it was helpful and three out of 15(34%) students answered that it was very helpful. Eighty seven percent of the students answered that visual display of sound wave form helped them to understand the lung sound. Fourteen out of 15 students answered that multimedia program was interesting and provocative. All student answered that they will recommend this title to other colleagues. CONCLUSON: Even though there was no stastical significant difference between two self study methods but student of multimedia group showed narrow range of score than tape group. Answer to the questionnaire supported the usefulness of multimedia for the self study of lung sound. Therefore we conclude that this program is helpful in the self-learninig of lung sound for medical students.