Developing Competency on Medico-Legal Report Writing: An Example-Based (News Item Based) Teaching Methodology

Forensic practice differs from other medical disciplines pertaining to the legalities involved in casework and report writing. Forensic Medicine is taught for duration of one and half year in the present undergraduate curriculum but it is often found that the reports written by the pass outs are often unsatisfactory and studded with mistakes. An incomplete and erroneous entry not only beats the very purpose of Medico-Legal reports (MLR) but can also potentially prove to be a major professional setback.

The Indian Medical Graduate (IMG) will be able to write a MLR/post-mortem report (PMR) with least mistakes and legible content in which the opinion is helpful to the law abiding agency. To find out that Newspaper item can create interest in MLR writing in undergraduate second year professional M.B.B.S. students.

After taking approval from the Institutional Ethical Committee, a cross-sectional study conducted at R.N.T. Medical College, Udaipur (Rajasthan), for which 112 students of second year professional M.B.B.S. and three faculty members has consented for participating in this example-based (News Item Based) teaching methodology.

Taking the magnitude of this problem on a serious note, we introduced News Item-based teaching in the current project (second year M.B.B.S. students of year 2015–2016 and 2016–2017) and did a prospective cum retrospective analysis of the reports written by M.B.B.S. students. This example-based (News Item Based) teaching methodology in the back drop of the subject of Forensic Medicine drive the student's thought process towards a sense of attachment towards the subject (example-based learning to continue at small group teaching had better response of 100%). Students were able to communicate better, the happenings in the proximate environment to the Medico-Legal context. Small group teaching in medical education was agreed upon by greater majority of students and faculty members as a more effective way of learning (small group teaching post-test score 16.58 as compare with didactic lecture post-test score 15.76) which motivated them to use additional learning resources and helped in better retention of information.

Certainly, students learn better from real-life situations which are depicted in the newspapers. It was further felt that it is high time when our teaching skills should focus on practical implications of the curricular contents.