Objective: To determine the effectiveness of didactic case-based instruction methodology to improve medical student comprehension of common neurological illnesses and neurological emergencies.
Setting: Neurology department, academic university.
Participants: 415 third and fourth year medical students performing a required four week neurology clerkship.
Main outcome measures: Raw test scores on a 1 hour, 50-item clinical vignette based examination and open-ended questions in a post-clerkship feedback session.
Results: There was a statistically significant improvement in overall test scores (p<0.001).
Conclusion: Didactic teaching sessions have a significant positive impact on neurology student clerkship test score performance and perception of their educational experience. Confirmation of these results across multiple specialties in a multi-center trial is warranted.
Keywords: Medical student; didactic sessions; education; feedback; test performance.