Quality assurance of education in surgery: I. Approach to improving its quality

Improving the quality of medical education is a worldwide challenge; severe indictments of the quality of medical education can be stated. Evaluation is a neglected field in medical education, and major deficiencies exist in the evaluation of the instructional processes. The aim of this study is to describe the implementation and evaluation of quality assurance procedures into teaching medicine. This study describes, in part I, the Munich Curricular Innovation Project (MCIP) and its evaluation as a component of quality assurance. This innovative project, serving as data source for this study, started in 1986 and is still ongoing. A model is proposed that links medical education to quality assurance. It comprises a didactic, a motivational, and an evaluational approach, aiming at both the measurement of the instructional processes and educational outcome. The evaluation consists mainly of direct observation of teaching (process evaluation records), a questionnaire investigating the motivation of students to learn, and the assessment of the acceptance of the MCIP by another questionnaire. Outcome measurements were undertaken by assessing product evaluation records and observing student performances in the skills labs. The evaluation, investigated by this study, is based on quasi-experimental study designs and longitudinal studies, especially the iterative measurement. This case study uses methods from qualitative data analysis such as field inquiry. This inquiry, designed as a case report without a control group, is descriptive and not prescriptive. It evaluates, in part II, the evaluation established in the MCIP, thus performing a kind of meta-evaluation. The evaluation tools are evaluated using standards proposed by the American Psychological Association.