["Without any practical relevance?": 3 years of student evaluation of an interdisciplinary curriculum for prevention and health promotion in undergraduate medical education].

Background: The topic "prevention and health promotion" (Q10) was introduced into the medical training in Germany by the new medical licensing regulations in 2004. For the conception of an effective curriculum in the context of quality assurance, a continuous evaluation by the target group is necessary. Of importance are particularly the subjective success in learning and its interdependence to invested time, achievement expenditure and perceived relevance of the topics.

Methods: Medical students (N=660) of the fifth academic years of 2007-2009 at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg were asked about their opinion after completing their Q10 curriculums by means of a standardised questionnaires. Emphasis of the questioning was placed on self estimates about success in learning, expenditure of time, evaluation of instruction elements, perceived relevance of prevention topics and the motivation for further occupation with the topic field. The collection instruments covered multiple choice questions, decimal number data and 5-point Likert scales.

Results: 510 questionnaires (77% return) could be evaluated. The curriculum "prevention and health promotion" was continuously evaluated over 3 years with increasingly indicated performance requirements and expenditure of time regarding instruction elements and success in learning. The invested time in lecture visits correlated positively with relevance-attribution (r=0.16, p<0.01) and subjective success in learning (r=0.29, p<0.001). The strongest correlations regarding subjective success in learning were shown in the evaluation of the instruction elements (r=0.65, p<0.001), perceived relevance of the topic (r=0.42, p<0.001) and motivation (r=0.45, p<0.001).

Conclusions: Self-estimated success in learning within the interdisciplinary field of prevention and health promotion can be fostered by elucidating the relevance of the topic. Increasing requirements and expenditure of time for the preparation of performance records seem to be a less effective stimulus for successes in learning as the promotion of the lecture visit. The selection of suitable teaching and testing formats for prevention and health should orient itself - apart from objective success measurement - also on student evaluations.