Case Based Learning in Undergraduate Pathology ? A Study to Assess its Efficacy and Acceptability as Teaching-Learning Tool

Background: An innovative paradigm, of teaching-learning (TL) method, like Case Based Learning (CBL) in a paraclinical subject like Pathology is considered essential, which would bring about learning of pathological and clinical features of diseases in an integrated easy manner, resulting in growing of interest in undergraduate medical students to learn pathology with better retention of knowledge. Aim: To evaluate the efficacy of CBL as a TL method in Pathology and to assess perception of students and teachers to CBL. Materials and methods: Study involved 86 students from 2nd professional MBBS course. Two common diseases viz. microcytic hypochromic anemia and pulmonary tuberculosis were taught in two phases respectively. Students were equally divided into two large groups of 43 each ? Didactic lecture (DL) and CBL groups. DL group was taught with conventional DL by Pathology-faculties and CBL group was taught with CBL tool jointly by pathology and relevant clinical faculties. Teaching method was interchanged between large groups for two diseases. Pretest and post-test were conducted before and after intervention (DL/CBL) respectively. In addition, to test for knowledge retention one late post-test was also conducted in 2nd phase. Lastly, students’ and teachers’ feedbacks on perception to CBL were obtained. Results: Significant increase in mean-scores of post-tests than from pretests in both phases was observed with post-test mean-scores of CBL group significantly higher than that of DL group, although the difference in pretest mean-scores of the groups was not significant. Comparison of mean-scores of late post-test and immediate post-test of CBL group in 2nd phase showed no significant difference, whereas the same for DL group showed significantly lower mean-score in late post-test. Feedbacks of students and teachers revealed that they were more satisfied with CBL than DL. Conclusion: CBL is more effective and highly acceptable TL tool than DL in Pathology.