What university has the most satisfied students?

WHAT UNIVERSITY HAS THE MOST SATISFIED MEDICAL STUDENTS?

Text: Matias Jacomet | Vice-President for Education 21/22

Have you ever talked to students from other medical faculties about their medical education? If you have, you might also have been surprised how different the experiences of students that study the same subject can be, based on where they study it. It already starts before the studies actually start: The faculties in the German part of Switzerland select their future students via an aptitude test, while the faculties of Geneva and Lausanne conduct their selection at the end of the first year. In some medical faculties, students get to interact with patients already during the first years of the semester, while at other faculties the first patient-contact happens during the last year of the bachelor. Some faculties tend to have quite a thoroughly planned schedule, while other faculties also include more time for individual studying.

These are just a few of many examples how medical education can differ between the faculties. But what aspects of medical education are the most important regarding student satisfaction? And are there significant differences in student satisfaction between the faculties regarding these aspects of medical education? This is what the AK/CoFo wanted to find out and this was the beginning of the National Comparative Survey. What aspects of medical education have a significant impact on the general satisfaction of medical students?

Taking into account the many noticed differences between the faculties above, the following question arised: What aspects of medical education are relevant for the students' satisfaction? To answer this, the AK/CoFo 20/21, which is represented by students from all ten medical faculties, conducted a brainstorming session to gather as many potentially relevant aspects. A small working group was then assigned to the project and categorised the different aspects into eight variables: “Curriculum & Schedule”, “Lectures & Teaching”, “Practical Courses”, “Patient/Clinical Courses”, “Exams”, “Communication”, “Learning materials & Infrastructure” and “Mental Health”. They also formulated different questions to ask about student satisfaction regarding these variables. The questionnaire was then revisioned and finally unanimously accepted by the AK/CoFo 21/22. At this point, I want to once more thank the over 30 medical students, for all their time and effort they put into the creation, distribution and evaluation of this survey. Without you, this project would never have been possible.

The variables this survey aims to further investigate

The survey was distributed in November 2021 and nearly 1’200 students participated. The results showed significant correlations to the general student satisfaction for 6 out of the 8 variables mentioned above. Especially the variables “Curriculum & Schedule” and “Lectures & Teaching” seem to be relevant to the student satisfaction with medical education in general, as they show correlations of medium effect sizes. The variables “Practical Courses”, “Exams”, “Learning materials & Infrastructure” as well as “Mental Health” have also shown significant small correlations. Surprisingly, the “Patient/Clinical Courses” have not shown a significant correlation. We strongly assume that we have not been able to find the right questions for this variable, as in general medical students mention their clinical courses as a very relevant aspect of their education.

There was also no significant correlations for “Communication”, as well as for age, study year and the gender identities “Female”, “Male” and “Non-binary”. However, participants that chose the option “Prefer not to state” when asked about their gender, show a significant negative correlation with general student satisfaction. This result also needs further evaluation.

All in all, the eight variables were able to explain approximately 60% of the variance of general student satisfaction, which is a considerable amount for a concept as “satisfaction”, as it is generally influenced by many different things. This once more shows that medical students are able to identify relevant aspects of their medical education and an active inclusion of the students in decisions regarding their education could also lead to an improvement of the results of such decisions.

There are significant differences!

The evaluation of the results clearly showed that at least one faculty seems to be different from the other Swiss medical faculties for every variable and also regarding general student satisfaction. Further analysis allowed us to compare all the faculties pairwise. Unfortunately, it is not possible to discuss every single significant difference in this article. Therefore we wanted to point out the faculties that showed significant differences from at least 3 or more other Swiss medical faculties for one of the variables:

This was the case in Bern and Lugano for all the variables, with exception of “Learning materials & Infrastructure” and “Mental Health” for Lugano and “Exams” and “Mental Health” for Bern. In addition to these two faculties, Lucerne and Geneva also show this amount of significant differences regarding “Communication”. In addition to Bern, Lucerne also showed this amount of significant

differences regarding “Learning materials & Infrastructure”. These 4 faculties have higher mean values for these variables in comparison to the faculties they differ significantly from.

On the other hand there were also faculties that showed three or more significant differences to other faculties but showed lower mean values than these faculties for the contemplated variable. This was the case for Basel regarding “Lectures & Teaching”, for Lausanne and Zurich regarding “Practical/Clinical Courses”. Also for Basel, Fribourg and Zurich regarding “Communication” and for Fribourg and Lausanne regarding “Learning materials & Infrastructure”.

One more thing to point out was that there were no faculties that had 3 or more significant differences in the variable“Mental Health”. However, as the mean satisfaction of Swiss medical students with “Mental Health” was only slightly over 3, and multiple faculties even showed a mean value below 3 (indicating dissatisfaction), this aspect of student satisfaction would also be in need of improvement. So these are the results. We already discussed the results with different members of the local student associations to gather possible reasons for these results. You can find their points, as well as the whole study in the National Comparative Survey rapport on the swimsa website. Additionally, swimsa has already been able to present the results to the deans of the Swiss medical faculties during a SMIFK-meeting, received very constructive feedback and was asked how students would like to proceed with these results. To find the best solutions to these challenges, we will need as much input from the local students as possible. This means we need your input! Are the results as expected or are you surprised about something? Why do you think that the results come out this way for your university? Do you have any suggestions on how to improve these different aspects of medical education?

If you want to share your thoughts, ideas and questions feel free to contact us via vpa@swimsa.ch.

The general satisfaction for each university.