Rationale and objectives: The aim of this study was to verify earlier work on learning and retaining chest radiographic anatomy introduced during preclinical education and revisited in the clinical years by comparing the initial clinical group to clinical students in a second setting who had no preclinical exposure.
Materials and methods: One hundred thirty-seven clinical medical students were pretested and posttested on the same 10 items as were used in the first study. Scores on these 10-item standardized pretests and posttests were compared and assessed for statistical significance.
Results: Although the clinical students with preclinical exposure scored significantly higher on the pretest than the students without preclinical exposure (mean, 4.42 vs 4.09), there was a much larger significant difference in posttest improvement (mean, 8.65 vs 6.09). Isolating only the senior students to control for clinical experience (pretest, 4.42 vs 4.38; posttest, 8.65 vs 6.09) did not significantly affect outcomes.
Conclusions: Many medical schools are revising curricula and incorporating new models of learning. It may be important to recognize that older approaches such as memorization and testing are still necessary to start building the enormous "filing cabinet" of facts that must be cross-linked, revisited, and retrievable to contribute to a usable fund of medical knowledge.