Effects of the Emergency Trauma Training Course on the confidence of final-year medical students dealing with trauma patients.

Trauma is an important issue that has been neglected in the training of medical students. This study evaluated the effects of the Emergency Trauma Training Course (ETTC), after completion of standard medical training, on seventh-year medical students. The ETTC was designed in Taiwan by the Taiwan Society of Emergency Medicine to train physicians and registered nurses who care for trauma patients in the emergency department (ED). We implemented the course for our medical students' internship. One hundred and fifty-one participants were divided into three groups: Group A included 36 medical students before they entered their internship in hospital; Group B included 41 medical students who had received 6 months of internship training in hospital; and Group C included 74 ED nurses. Group C was used to test Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the questionnaire. After the training course, the participants had a final examination and filled out a questionnaire about the training course and their levels of self-confidence. There were no differences in scores between the medical students in Groups A and B (p = 0.064). Using repeated measures analysis of variance, we found that confidence before training was low, with no difference between Groups A and B. Confidence improved after training, but there was still no significant difference between the groups (p = 0.875). However, there were significant differences between confidence levels before and after the training course (p < 0.001). Therefore, although inhospital training for 6 months failed to increase confidence, the confidence of final year medical students after completion of their training was improved by the ETTC. This indicates that the ETTC could increase the confidence of participants. This is the first evaluation of the implementation of the ETTC for final-year medical students in Taiwan. Based on our results, we highly recommend that this training course be taught to final-year medical students before they practice in hospital.