The purpose of this proposed quantitative, ex post facto, comparative study with a pretest-posttest design was to assess gains in overall Critical Thinking (CT) skills, and particularly in the Hypothetical-deductive Reasoning (HDR) skills, for pre-health college students tested before and after a Critical Analyses in Science course they attended…

The main objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of an active learning space (ALS) in supporting student development of effective communication as a transferable skill. A fourth-year medical science course was taught in two different settings, an ALS and a fixed-row classroom, by the same instructor. Participants preferred the ALS for…

Gender disparities in retention in pathways to science continue to vary widely by course. Undergraduates intending to study prehealth and premedicine often represent a majority of students enrolled in introductory science courses, contribute to a large number of eventual science degree earners, and are a population that typically includes a high…

Despite being a traditional coursework for pre-medical and medical students around the globe, biochemistry education suffers from a lack of positive appreciation due to the nature of the subject combined with deficiency of teaching modalities. A first semester biochemistry course was designed to include four different teaching modalities:…

Graduate-entry, following a science degree, is the preferred pathway into many medical schools, however little is known about how the learning approaches of medical students compare to those of science students. This study compared the learning approaches and achievement orientations of science students with those aiming to enter graduate-entry…

Women take qualifying exams and enter medical school at substantially lower levels than predicted by their interest in medical degrees at the end of high school. We examined how science course experiences contribute to gendered attrition in premed using a multicohort data set of 8,253 undergraduates taking the traditional premed sequence of…

In response to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute/Association of American Medical Colleges Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians (SFFP) report and a concern for better preparing undergraduates for future doctoral programs in the health professions, the deans of the College of Arts and Sciences and Division of Basic Biomedical Sciences of…

To help faculty prepare and revise courses in all the disciplines represented in the MCAT[superscript 2015], the American Association of Medical Colleges, through its MedEdPORTAL's iCollaborative, has established the Pre-health Collection, a repository of reviewed web resources that are openly and freely available to faculty, and indirectly…

A physical model was used in a laboratory exercise to teach students about countercurrent exchange mechanisms. Countercurrent exchange is the transport of heat or chemicals between fluids moving in opposite directions separated by a permeable barrier (such as blood within adjacent blood vessels flowing in opposite directions). Greater exchange of…

In an introductory physics sequence with a large enrollment of premedical students, traditional recitation sessions were replaced by "Tutorials in Introductory Physics," developed by the Physics Education Group at the University of Washington. Initially, summative test scores (as well as FCI scores) dramatically increased, but so did…

This study attempted to determine if test anxiety is manifested in pre-medical students as a result of the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) and if Beta-endorphin similarly responds to that type of situational stress. Seventeen participants completed the Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI) by Spielberger et al. (1980) and donated 30 ml of blood for…

Discusses issues related to the physics concepts/topics needed by health professionals, suggesting that medical students can better understand how the body works by completing meaningful physics courses. Also addresses related concerns expressed by medical students and faculty. A list of 41 physics topics cross-referenced to medical topics is…

A study of 200 medical students' records at Albany Medical College (New York) found that quantity of science-based undergraduate premedical education, either in its entirety or in subdivisions (specific subjects), did not materially affect performance in preclinical years of medical school. (Author/MSE)

Discusses electricity's documented effects on the human body, including both the dangers to human health and the medical application of electrical stimulation to heart problems. Discusses the teaching of such physics topics to potential medical students. (TW)

This document describes a study of 5,000 minority undergraduate students whose SAT mathematics scores were 550 and above. Background information, high school program, college experience, and the results of two questionnaires were analyzed. Other information was drawn from a national longitudinal database, High School and Beyond (HS&B). Results…