Objective:

To explore learning barriers in Neurology during pre-clinical medical school education.

Background:

Historically, neurology has been perceived as a difficult discipline (Flanigan et al., 2007; Schon et al., 2002). The term “neurophobia” was conceived to describe this “fear of the neural sciences and clinical neurology that is due to the student’s inability to apply their knowledge of basic sciences to clinical situations” (Jozefowicz, 1994, p. 328). Abushouk and Duk (2016) concluded that neurophobia is a negative influencer for medical students against choosing a career in neurology. A study done by Schon et al. (2002) revealed that neurology was viewed as the most difficult specialty largely due to poor teaching.

Design/Methods:

A secondary qualitative analysis of pre-clinical Neurology Block evaluation data was conducted at one large U.S. medical school with a sample consisting of 199 first-year medical students enrolled in 2017-2018. Students reported which areas of the Neurology Block needed improvement, each allowed to provide multiple responses. Open, axial, and selective coding were conducted.

Results:

There were 397 responses. Students identified learning barriers in four major categories: Education, Instructor, Organization, and Workload. The Education category (e.g. lecture content and material quality) had the largest number of deficits at 65%. Many difficulties were attributed to the lack of clinically relevant teaching and integration of neuroscience into clinical neurology. Only 7% of students reported that the quantity of material was a problem.

Conclusions:

Although neurology is often perceived as difficult due to the quantity of material, only a small percentage of students reported this as a problem. Most of the barriers lie within the quality of the education itself. Our study suggests that improved integration of basic neuroscience and clinical neurology may help decrease neurophobia and improve the perception of neurology among medical students. It is hoped that this will translate into better recruitment into the field.