Educational Research

TEmpiPrakt aims to promote scientific rigour in medical studies. Medical students in their second and third semesters (supported by tutors) independently designed a scientific study as part of an elective course, carried it out and analysed the data at the end. The randomised controlled study conducted by the students evaluated the effect of two relaxation methods on subjective relaxation and problem-solving behaviour in comparison to a control group. The study participants in the intervention groups either listened to a Yoga Nidra audio file several times for two weeks or used a meditation app ("7mind"). Before and after this, questionnaires with questions on subjective relaxation or stress experience and thinking and concentration tasks were answered.
The study is registered under DRKS00028884.

The results of the pilot teaching project showed that the integration of scientific work into the medical psychology curriculum is possible with good preparation in advance and is well received and explicitly desired by the Heidelberg students.

Duration of the project: 01.01.2022 - 31.12.2022

Funding: Dean's Office of the Faculty of Medicine at Heidelberg University

Project management: Tewes Wischmann, Julia Mahal, Beate Ditzen

Project staff: Xenia Krohmer, Vivienne Spruck

Contact persons: Xenia Krohmer

Practising challenging medical situations is still underrepresented in the preclinical and clinical study phases. Although training in communication skills for shaping the doctor-patient relationship is now an integral part of medical training and has been proven to improve treatment and treatment satisfaction in the long term, doctors still feel inadequately prepared for dealing with challenging dialogue situations.

In the project "Challenge - competently dealing with challenging conversational situations", a total of 10 film scenarios, each lasting around 10 minutes, were shot from the perspective of a third party so that the events can be viewed and experienced "from the outside". The films are based on real situations that the clinicians themselves have experienced in their day-to-day work and which they remember as particularly challenging. Based on these situations, the project team developed detailed scripts in close consultation with the clinicians, which formed the basis of these videos for the acting patients and clinicians.

The presented challenging conversation is interrupted twice at important points for the success of the conversation and the viewer is interactively involved in the conversation and asked how the conversation could be continued. Three response options are provided for this, which are also shown on film. In this way, the more positive or more negative effects of the chosen option can be directly observed and experienced based on the patient's reactions. After selecting the answer, information on the appropriateness of the selected answer alternative appears.

Duration of the project: 01.04.2021-31.03.2022

Funding: Quality assurance funding from the Heidelberg Medical Student Council

Project management: Tewes Wischmann, Julia Mahal, Beate Ditzen

Project staff: Katja Schmalenberger

Contact persons: Julia Mahal

The aim of the "Medical Psychology Conversation Series" is to take up and present examples of various conversational situations from different medical specialities in which doctors and patients interact with each other. The dialogue situations are illustrated by 14 videos and underpinned by theoretical texts. It also contains information chapters that provide further information on the topics shown in the educational videos.

At the end of each chapter there are one or more exercises in which users of the online course can practise the knowledge they have acquired from the accompanying texts using practical examples.

As a special didactic feature of the "Medical Psychology Discussion Series" concept, all the educational videos are embedded in an overarching chronological framework that describes the life of the fictitious Meier family over several decades. The development of the family can be followed over the course of the life cycle using the instructional videos. In this way, the doctor-patient videos can depict many different areas of the patients' lives.

The target group of the teaching programme are medical students and lecturers who teach content on doctor-patient communication.

The "Medical psychology dialogue series" has been available from Thieme-Verlag since April 2019 (free of charge for students at Heidelberg University; here are the instructions under Moodle).

In this doctoral project (Dr med. dent.), doctors in practices and clinics are surveyed online on the subjectively assessed importance of teaching in medical psychology/sociology for their current professional activity. The results will be used to develop concepts for improving current teaching.