title: Teaching dermatoscopy of pigmented skin tumours to novices: comparison of analytic vs. heuristic approach.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  There are two strategies to approach the dermatoscopic diagnosis of pigmented skin tumours, namely the verbal-based analytic and the more visual-global heuristic method. It is not known if one or the other is more efficient in teaching dermatoscopy.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To compare two teaching methods in short-term training of dermatoscopy to medical students.
  
  
  METHODS
  Fifty-seven medical students in the last year of the curriculum were given a 1-h lecture of either the heuristic- or the analytic-based teaching of dermatoscopy. Before and after this session, they were shown the same 50 lesions and asked to diagnose them and rate for chance of malignancy. Test lesions consisted of melanomas, basal cell carcinomas, nevi, seborrhoeic keratoses, benign vascular tumours and dermatofibromas. Performance measures were diagnostic accuracy regarding malignancy as measured by the area under the curves of receiver operating curves (range: 0-1), as well as per cent correct diagnoses (range: 0-100%).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Diagnostic accuracy as well as per cent correct diagnoses increased by +0.21 and +32.9% (heuristic teaching) and +0.19 and +35.7% (analytic teaching) respectively (P for all <0.001). Neither for diagnostic accuracy (P = 0.585), nor for per cent correct diagnoses (P = 0.298) was a difference between the two groups.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Short-term training of dermatoscopy to medical students allows significant improvement in diagnostic abilities. Choosing a heuristic or analytic method does not have an influence on this effect in short training using common pigmented skin lesions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Dermatology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tschandl
authors.affiliation: Department of Dermatology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kittler
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Karl Franzens University Graz, Graz, Austria.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Schmid
authors.affiliation: Skin Cancer Unit, Arcispedale Santa Maria Nuova IRCCS, Reggio Emilia, Italy.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Zalaudek
authors.affiliation: Skin Cancer Unit, Arcispedale Santa Maria Nuova IRCCS, Reggio Emilia, Italy.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Argenziano
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D019540:Area Under Curve; D002280:Basal Cell Carcinoma / Q000473:pathology*; D046169:Dermoscopy / Q000193:education*; D004521:Educational Measurement; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D000066506:Heuristics; D018219:Histiocytoma, Benign Fibrous / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D017492:Keratosis, Seborrheic / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D008545:Melanoma / Q000473:pathology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D017145:Models, Educational; D009508:Nevus, Pigmented / Q000473:pathology*; D064186:Prenatal Education; D018794:Problem-Based Learning; D012372:ROC Curve; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D012878:Skin Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*; D013337:Students, Medical; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*