Use of a podcast as a tool for teaching elderly health in undergraduate Medical training

ABSTRACT

Introduction:

Worldwide life expectancy has been increasing in recent decades and to meet this demand, it is necessary to educate and train health professionals to adequately care for the geriatric population in Brazil. In this context, the podcast is proposed in the literature as a possible tool for medical education, given the potential of digital communication to transform education around the world.

Objective:

To evaluate learning in Elderly Health using the podcast as a tool in medical undergraduate students.

Method:

This is a descriptive, longitudinal, quantitative study, conducted between January and December 2022, with 59 medical students from the University of the State of Pará, who answered the test questionnaire, from August to October 2022, before and after listening to the episodes of the podcast created for this research. The questionnaire contained specific questions about the health of the elderly, divided into 5 domains: anamnesis of the elderly, physical examination in the elderly, doctor-patient relationship, falls, and immunization in the elderly.

Results:

In the general evaluation of each domain, a statistical difference was identified in four of the five groups, as well as in the overall value, where the students increased their correct answers from 70.7% to 80.6% after listening to the podcast - an improvement of almost 10 percentage points. The Immunization domain had the highest percentage gains (45.2% to 74.0%), followed by the domain that dealt with falls in the elderly, rising from 79.1% before the podcast to 91.0%, in the second evaluation.

Conclusion:

The students obtained better results in the objective tests after listening to the podcast episodes about the health of the elderly. Podcasting has the potential to become a core component of medical education, in either a formal or informal format. Additional studies should also investigate how podcasts can be constructed in order to optimize knowledge retention by listeners.

Keywords:
Medical Education; Podcast; Health of the Elderly