Today, I'll be talking about the topic of the effectiveness of prematriculation programs for student success in medical school. Prematriculation is a program at OUH, Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine that provides an accelerated experience for select incoming students to have a preview of medical school and what the curriculum is like. There are a lack of studies seeing how these programs actually affect the students in their first year of medical school, particularly at an osteopathic medical school. So the purpose of the study was to determine how the prematric program impacted participants in their first year. The research question looked at two different things. First, what was the effect of prematric on the participant perceived self-efficacy and study habits? So how did the participants themselves perceive the program on their self-efficacy and study? Secondly, it looked at the effect of prematric on the participant exam and quiz performance. So how were they performing against the rest of their class? How this was done was an anonymous survey was sent to the 16 students who completed the program, and we had a completion rate of 44%. And the survey was administered twice at the end of their first semester and at the end of their second semester. And this included five point Likert scale questions and five open-ended questions about their assessment preparedness, about study habits, and about self-efficacy about the program. And this was analyzed using descriptive statistics, and also the free response was analyzed using thematic analysis. The exam and weekly quiz performance between the prematric participants and the whole class were analyzed using independent t-tests. So the results of the study in figure one, this showed the results of the Likert scale questions on study habits. And as you can see, there was kind of a mix of responses, and it wasn't a very clear-cut answer on how well prematric helped with trying different study strategies and also executing a study schedule. So it kind of varied. However, looking at helping prepare for an active learning environment, it seemed like this program really helped them get a grasp on the curriculum of an active learning environment, but helping them with study habits not so much. Looking at figure two, at how prematric improved confidence in succeeding in medical school, it really had a good, strong consensus that they agreed that this program helped them build that confidence for starting medical school. And then in figure three, prematric prepared them to take content exams. This was also a pretty decent consensus on, agreed they thought that this program helped them go in and take those assessments and exams in medical school better. Now looking at figure four and five, this was how the exam and quiz performances were shown. So in figure four, the exam performance, you can see it's split up into semester one and semester two. And then in how the prematric participants performed on the average and also the entire class. And there was a statistically significant decrease in exam scores in the first semester in the group that participated in prematric. However, in semester two, there was not any difference. And looking at figure five, there was also no difference in either of the semesters or either of the groups of participants. Now looking at table one, this was a thematic analysis of the free response in that survey that was sent out. And there was a few different themes that was pretty prominent. The first one being that prematric was helpful for learning content. So they found that seeing OMM and anatomy and clinical skills really helped them in their first year of medical school. It also helped them feel self-assured so they could see themselves as a medical student and not just imagine it. And they felt like they were more capable and wasn't as intimidated. However, they did notice that there was some issues with time management. They said that they felt like they were in class for too long at prematric and they were able to implement the strategies that they were learning, that it was pretty overwhelming. And then lastly, they found that having exposure to the curriculum that we have at OUHCOM, the group-based learning and flipped classroom, was really helpful to see how it was in the first year of medical school. So overall, it seemed that prematric appeared to provide some benefits of the active learning environment and improve confidence in the assessments, but there seemed to be some mixed response on the study habits. This suggests maybe an area of improvement in the program on how can we help the participants have better study strategies and maybe teach them more about that during the program. For academic performance, there was a statistically significant difference in that first semester for exam performance, suggesting that maybe prematric students didn't achieve the same level of performance as the rest of the cohort. And maybe it was because the content in the first semester didn't translate well to what they learned in the program, and there was no difference in the second semester. So perhaps maybe they were able to adapt effective study strategies in that second semester. They finally got a hold of how medical school works and was ran, and they did better. Or maybe the content taught in prematric better prepared them for that content in the second semester. They were able to use more skills from prematric for that. And then lastly, table one, the thematic analysis, it really seemed that students struggled with time management, and possibly that correlates with the decrease in exam scores in semester one. However, they seem to get a hold of it in semester two and also in table one, talking about how they felt more confident and was able to see themselves as a medical student, not just imagine it. And so overall, the results of this really show that the value of prematric in the program in this medical school and how it helps self-efficacy and the development of effective study strategies. So some future directions could be examining the long-term outcomes, seeing how they do in second and third year and fourth year, and also looking at possibly the MCAT and GPA to see what kind of background are these students coming in with, and are they truly, do they come in at a disadvantage or are they performing at similar MCAT and GPA as their other participants or students? And then lastly, looking at face-to-face interviews, some limitations, this only included one year of students. There was some other variables, like I talked about, maybe looking at the MCAT and GPA, and also the comparison group for the quiz and exam grades were the entire class, possibly comparing them to students who qualified for the program but did not attend may yield more accurate results. So overall, it seems that this program was extremely helpful in providing a background in medical school for these students and shows that this could be improved through some ways, but overall, it seemed to be a really strong program and was really helpful. Thank you.

prematriculation program

medical students

self-efficacy

exam preparedness

time management