[Teaching and perception of urology by medical students at the end of the second cycle: an appraisal].
OBJECTIVE
Our purpose was to determine how the medical students from the second cycle perceived urology and what their learning methods were.


METHODS
An e-questionnaire was sent to 1600 students in 16 teaching faculties during the last year of their second cycle.


RESULTS
Overall, we obtained 590 answers (36.8%). In our population, 70.2% of the students were women. Of them, 24.1% had been already enrolled in an academic urology unit. Urology was defined as a medical, surgical and medico-surgical discipline by 3.7%, 37.8% and 58% of the students, respectively. Urology was considered as very important, important, not very important and not important at all by 5.1%, 54.4%, 37.5% and 2.4% of the students. The teaching methods used to learn urology were duplicated-notes for ENC preparation (45.3%), conferences for ENC (French national ranking exam) preparation (43.7%), courses of the national urology college (38.6%) and courses of the faculty (32%). The best mastered items were lithiasis disease (86.3%), voiding dysfunction (76.3%) and urological cancers (56.7%). On the contrary, only 34.7% and 28% considered their knowledge sufficient on the erectile dysfunctions and on renal transplantation. Lastly, 7.3% intended to become urologists. Having a work experience in a urology unit was significantly associated to the feeling of being prepared to become an intern (p<0.001) and to the project of becoming a urologist (p<0.001).


CONCLUSIONS
Urology was considered like an important discipline by half of the students at the end of the second cycle even though it is under-represented in the national teaching programme for ENC. A third of the students used courses from the faculty to learn urology and a quarter of them had a work experience in a urology unit during their second cycle.
Bigot
P
P
Service d'urologie, université d'Angers, Angers cedex 9, France.
Campillo
B
B
Orsat
M
M
Bernhard
J-C
JC
Mathieu
R
R
Koutlidis
N
N
Lebdai
S
S
Xylinas
E
E
Beley
S
S
Richard
I
I
Saint-André
J-P
JP
Azzouzi
A-R
AR
Rouprêt
M
M
D001290:Attitude; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014572:Urology / Q000193:education*