To investigate the impact of neurology residents’ teaching on the medical students’ overall experience in the neurology rotation and interest in pursuing neurology residency.

Rapidly rising rates of neurological conditions in the aging population and the decline in the number of medical students choosing neurology create a significant shortage of neurologists in the US. Medical students rotating in neurology spend a notable amount of time with the residents during their clerkship and their experience in neurology is potentially affected by their interactions with residents.

Third year medical students rotating in our Neurology Department at UTHealth’s McGovern Medical School completed two surveys regarding their Neurology rotation experiences; before and after their rotation in an anonymous manner. We used descriptive statistics to show the change in their interest of neurology before and after the rotation and their perceived value of the rotation. We used the spearman correlation analyses to determine the correlates of their overall experience during rotation and interest in neurology.

Among the 59 students who completed the survey, 87.91% of the students perceived the rotation as being very valuable. The interest in pursuing neurology residency increased from 17.78% to 62.71% after their rotation.91.53% of the students think that their residents are good role models in terms of professionalism and bedside manner,76.27% indicated that residents are very efficient teachers, and 94.91% believed residents created a positive learning experience for them. The residents’ teaching efficiency correlated significantly with the students’ overall experience (r=0.511;p<0.001) but not their interests in neurology (r=0.08;p=0.54).

Our preliminary study shows that students’ perceptions of residents’ teaching performance is positively associated with their overall rotation experience. As a future direction, our group is providing workshops on teaching strategies to the residents to further optimize medical students’ experience during their neurology rotation and increase their interest in pursuing clinical neurology.