Research On The Reform Of Psychiatry Teaching Based On Semantic Structural Theory

Objective:To study the effect of semantic structure teaching on promoting medical students'clinical reasoning by applying semantic structure theory in psychiatric teaching.Method:The subjects were five-year medical program senior students in medical college. Experimental group were 48 senior students whose grade were 2004 and control group were 43 senior students whose grade were 2005. The syllabus of two groups were the same. The curricula of control group was taught by conventional teaching way, and that of experimental group was taught by semantic structure teaching way. Subjects of two groups was tested Diagnostic Thinking Inventory(DTI) at the beginning and the end of psychiatric curricula, and took part in psychiatric examination after one month psychiatric teaching was finished. The psychiatric examination included two types of problems: multiple choose questions and key feature problems.The differences of scores in DTI and psychiatric examination of two groups were compared.Results:1. There were statistically significant differences between two groups'psychiatric examination scores(t=2.367, P=0.019), and it was the same to Key Feature Problems scores(t=3.927,P=0.000), but there was no statistically significant differences between two groups'Multiple Choose Questions sores(t=1.299, P=0.197).2. For the two groups, there was no statistically significant differences between the total scores of pre-test DTI (t=0.529, P=0.598). For control group, there was no statistically significant differences between the DTI total scores of pre-test and post-test, Thinking Flexibility scores and Memory Structure scores of twice tests respectively(t=0.277,P=0.783;t=0.482,P=0.632;t=0.088,P=0.932). For experimental group, there were statistically significant differences between the DTI total scores and Memory Structure scores of two tests respectively(t=3.551,P=0.001; t=4.426, P=0.000), but there was no statistically significant difference between Thinking Flexibility scores (t=1.800,P=0.079).Conclusion:1. The knowledge level of medical students who experience. semantic structure teaching is as well as that of students accept conventional curricula.2. Compared with conventional teaching, semantic structure teaching is able to more effectively promote medical students'psychiatry clinical reasoning competence.3. Semantic structure teaching is able to enhance medical students' knowledge structures, and benefit for the development of medical students'knowledge representation, which may be the reason that semantic structure teaching promotes their psychiatry clinical reasoning.