By Megan Sumeracki

When creating content and materials for the Learning Scientists website, we try to include many different types of forms (NOT because of Learning Styles, but because of preferences, and diversity in the type of media an individual can consume!). Today’s blog post revisits a paper that I covered almost five years ago in a podcast episode (Episode 19 Bite-Size Research on Benefits of Retrieval with Medical Residents). It is a repeat, but repetition, especially after time has passed, helps with learning (though this is much longer than we would normally recommend!) and we know some prefer to read and/or use the blog archive. (If you prefer to listen, you can find all our podcast episodes listed here.)

With the constant advances in the medicine, medical training is continual and unabating. To start with, after spending typically four years earning a bachelor’s degree, medical professionals then typically spend four years in medical school, three to seven years in residency, and possibly a few years in fellowship. Then, relatively less formal education continues as the field advances and they must keep up with new research and procedures, and complete formal continued professional development. Thus, it is no surprise that there is great interest in improving the ways in which medical professionals learn so that learning can be more effective and efficient.

Fortunately, retrieval practice is a learning strategy that is both highly effective and efficient, and can be easily implemented (1). The strategy has been tested in the context of medical education many times; but in this example, Doug Larsen, and colleagues (2) show the importance of retrieval practice for medical residents.

The Experiment:

Medical residents affiliated with Washington University in St. Louis across all three years of the Pediatric Residency Program and all four years of the Emergency Medicine Program participated in a didactic conference. The conference was an hour-long interactive teaching session that was typical of the types of sessions medical residents would attend to learn about broad topics. This particular conference covered the treatment of status epilepticus, and the diagnosis and treatment of myasthenia gravis. The residents may run into patients with either of these in emergency medicine.

In the repeated retrieval condition, residents took practice tests with feedback after the conference. They repeated this two more times at 2-week intervals. In the repeated study condition, residents reviewed a study guide after the conference. They repeated this two more times at 2-week intervals.

The experiment was within subjects, meaning all the residents participated in both the repeated retrieval and repeated study learning conditions. Residents were randomly assigned to one of two groups:

• Group 1 practiced repeated retrieval with status epilepticus and reviewed the study guide for myasthenia gravis

• Group 2 repeatedly reviewed the study guide for status epilepticus and practiced retrieval with myasthenia gravis

The residents all took one big test over both topics 6 months after initial learning at the didactic conference.

The Results:

Residents who practiced retrieval remembered a lot more than those who reviewed the study guide! So, repeated retrieval spaced out over time led to greater levels of retention compared to repeated studying spaced out over time.

Repeated retrieval is beneficial for residents, individuals who are much further along in their professions than some of the typical populations we study (e.g., undergraduate college students or younger). The authors point out that residents are probably not, on their own without instruction to do so, repeatedly studying the information from these didactic conferences spaced out over time. So, the repeated study condition may actually be better than what the typical resident does normally. Yet, repeated retrieval leads to even better retention compared to repeated studying over time!

References:

(1) Van Hoof, T. J., Madan, C. R., & Sumeracki, M. A. (2021). Science of learning strategy series: Article 2, retrieval practice. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 41(2), 119-123. https://doi.org/10.1097/ceh.0000000000000335

(2) Larsen, D. P., Butler, A. C., & Roediger, H. L. (2009). Repeated testing improves long-term retention relative to repeated study: a randomized controlled trial. Medical Education, 43(12), 1174-1181. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.2009.03518.x