The usefulness of histopathology examples in teaching practical histology for medical students: A CONSORT-compliant randomized crossover trial

Background: Teaching histology as an image-intensive discipline is a major challenge to medical teachers. We compared knowledge retention and student preference after performing comparison-based and traditional methods of teaching practical histology.

Methods: We performed a crossover randomized controlled trial. Eighty nine first-year and 37 second-year medical students were randomly assigned to comparison-based or traditional classes in which PowerPoint slides were used. Each teaching approach was then switched to another group for a second tissue set. Quantitative assessment was performed using multiple-choice questions and a questionnaire.

Results: The first-year students' overall examination scores were significantly higher in the comparison-based approach compared to the traditional approach for both tissue sets, with a large effect size. Interestingly, even for the second-year students, a significantly higher overall score for one set of tissue samples was observed in the comparison-based approach compared to the traditional approach. The students' responses to all the elements in the questionnaire were significantly in favor of the comparison-based approach.

Conclusion: Our findings indicate that the simple implementation of a few histopathology examples can yield a tremendous improvement in first-year medical students' understanding, enjoyment, and engagement in practical histology classes.