Background: The structured diagnosis of chest radiographs is an important basic competence in radiology and will be required in the student teaching with the implementation of the National Competency-Based Learning Catalog Medicine (NKLM) in Germany.
Aim: The aim was to evaluate the extent to which second-year students gain confidence in the diagnosis of chest radiographs through a new curricular training for the diagnosis of chest radiographs with subsequent objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) and how confident they feel about meeting the expectations of the supervising medical colleagues during the clinical clerkship.
Methods: The training included four lectures and ten commented instructional films on the diagnosis of radiographs. Two years later, the students were asked how often and in what form they had contact with chest radiographs in their clinical clerkship. They were also asked how confident they felt in dealing in different areas. The students with training were also asked to what extent the lectures and the instructional films were helpful. The results of students in the last year without and the first year with training and OSCE were compared using the Mann-Whitney U test for independent samples.
Results: The frequency of dealing with chest radiographs was comparably high among students with and without training. The students with training and OSCE felt more confident and better prepared in dealing with chest radiographs than the students without training (varying between p < 0.001 and p = 0.148). They rated the educational films as more helpful than the lectures (mean 2.85 ± 0.76 vs. 3.41 ± 0.68 on a four-point scale).
Discussion: With early training, students' confidence in dealing with chest radiographs can be sustainably increased.
Keywords: Clinical clerkship; Instructional film; Medical education; Self-assessment; Thoracic X‑ray.