Journal of Research in Medical Education & Ethics

Recently, there have been many changes in teaching methodology to upgrade existing conventional methods and innovate new teaching-learning (T-L) methodology. One of the innovations in medical education is the utility of debates. Debate is a method of arriving at a decision on a controversy approved by a third party after conscious consideration of its pros and cons presented by two persons.

A revision exercise on nutrition and dietetics was conducted for 1^st year MBBS students in the specialty of Biochemistry in a premier medical college of India.

The allotted topic was delivered by didactic lecture and the revision was conducted through debate for one group and controlled discussion for the other.

Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 17. The pre-, posttest and clinical problem-solving scores are presented as mean and standard deviation. Differences in means between two groups were analyzed using t-test (for parametric data) or Mann-Whitney U-test (for non-parametric data). Differences in means between three groups were analyzed by using one-way ANOVA.

Objective assessment following the T-L session with written tests for knowledge and problem-solving skill showed that above two T-L tools are equally effective, hence objectively not proved to be superior.

Debates develop critical thinking abilities of budding physicians and improve clinical diagnosing skills and active learning among students and it should be optimally used in undergraduate medical education.