Abstract

JUAREZ-ADAUTA, Salvador. Learning styles in preclinical and postgraduate students of the General Regional Hospital No. 72, Mexican Institute of Social Security. Investigación educ. médica [online]. 2013, vol.2, n.5, pp.12-24. ISSN 2007-5057.

Introduction: Learning during hospital activities performed by under and postgraduate students is frequently limited by personal issues, adaptation to hospital environment, clinical activities, among others, leading to different behavior in daily clinical practice and learning styles, a style which is important to characterize in order to plan strategies to promote the process. Objective: To characterize the learning styles of under and postgraduate students in a regional general hospital. Material and methods: Descriptive, inferential and cross sectional study, conducted at IMSS (Mexican Institute of Social Security), Regional General Hospital (HGR) #72. Under and postgraduate students who consented to participate in the study were included. A questionnaire which classifies learning styles in four categories was used: active/reflexive, sensory/intuitive, visual/verbal and sequential/global. In order to evaluate and compare learning styles from the internship students (n=33), medical specialty residents (n=30), and family medicine residents (n=15), for each person, the frequency of values in the four measurement scales was quantified: active/reflexive (processing), sensory/intuitive (perception), visual/verbal (representation) and sequential/global (understanding). ANOVA was applied to determine the difference between men and women ages in the three groups. The level of significance used to assess differences was p<0.05. Results: Regarding to how information is processed or experience (active-reflective category), in both, specialty residents and internship students, the active process predominate, especially in the first group than in the last one (p<0.08). The reflective process, was less than the active for both groups, with significant differences (p<0.001). For the case of perception (sensory-intuitive category), sensitive learning predominated over the intuitive in both groups (p<0.001), and accordingly, internship students showed greater inclination to the intuitive. Regarding the process of representation (visual-verbal category), in both groups dominates the visual over the verbal but slightly more in internship students than in residents (no significant difference). Conclusions: It is desirable to have a balance of the different learning styles. In this study, in the processing area, in both groups predominate the active over the reflective and more in residents than in internship students; in terms of perception, the sensitive dominates over the intuitive and again with a higher tendency among residents than in internship students; in representation the visual dominates, with no difference between the two groups of students; and in terms of understanding, a strong trend, in both groups, towards the sequential than the global, also no differences between comparison groups. Knowing this characterization of Learning Styles is expected to modify teaching strategies in an environment as demanding as the clinical arena.

Keywords : Learning Styles; undergraduate; postgraduate students; Mexico.

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