Questions: 

At the Justus-Liebig University students are trained in basic physiology starting at the third semester with practical courses and corresponding lectures and seminars. While these courses cover nearly all aspects of physiology little is done to transfer these learning aims into clinical relevant problems such as tissue adaptation. We offer students at that time an additional free choice course in a weekly seminar that covers general aspects of cardiovascular physiology. Cardiovascular physiology was selected as a topic because it covers neurophysiological aspects such as arrhythmia and vegetative physiology such as blood pressure regulation and therefore integrates all aspects of physiology. In a practical part students also learn how risk factors modify basal physiology of nearly all aspects of cardiovascular adaptation. The course is aimed to improve the understanding of general physiology in parallel to classical courses.

Methodology: 

In order to monitor the learn progress of the students and to adapt the intensity of the learning process a questionnaire is used twice a month. A mixture of practical aspects including data collection and analysis and medical based seminar presentations allows an introduction into scientific work and a transfer of basic physiology into clinical understanding.

Results: 

Meanwhile 89 students have participated in the program. Learning curves are improved from 1.3 points at the beginning of the curse to 4.2 at the end of the curse (maximum 5.0). More important, in relationship to students of the same semester that do not participate in the program students participating in the course have a significantly better final examination in general physiology at the end of the semester (35.5±1.1 vs. 32.5±1.3 points; p=0.0185) and pass the course more often (57.3% vs. 45.7% learning success). Finally, the students learn and measure general cardiac risk parameters that cannot be simply investigated in a 135 min practical course. I.e., the mean probability of hypertension is calculated by 28.1% with non-modifiable risk factors such as genetic predisposition exceeding classical modifiable risk factors such as obesity, smoking, and low physical activity in students. Unfortunately, the high percentage of students with migration background and low language compatibility remain a serious problem that do not benefit from these courses.

Conclusion: 

A free weekly seminar covering basic aspects of physiology in a general clinic-related topic significantly improves the basic understanding of physiology either by inducing a better motivation to learn or by inducing a better general understanding of physiology as a complex interacting medical relevant topic.