To ascertain the prevalence of Neurophobia among Internal Medicine (IM) residents and evaluate the effectiveness of Neuro-Medicina, an original trivia-based interactive educational intervention aimed at addressing this issue.

Neurophobia, the colloquial term used for apprehension and anxiety surrounding Neurology due to its perceived difficulty and lack of early clinical exposure, is a significant barrier in medical education and subsequently in interdisciplinary patient care, particularly among IM residents. Traditional didactic methods seem to be insufficient in alleviating this well-recognized discomfort, underscoring the need for novel and interactive teaching approaches. 

This pilot project involved delivering an originally designed Neuro-Trivia based interactive educational intervention to 152 residents/interns across 4 hospital sites, followed by targeted bite-sized teaching. Post-intervention, participants completed a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree)  assessing their perception of prior comfort (adequate exposure), confidence (clinical knowledge)  & curiosity (continued interest) towards neurology, and the session's impact on these variables. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the results.

64.5% of participants reported to have previously experienced significant Neurophobia. The intervention was reported to have a positive impact on all 3 measured variables based on their likert scale scores (mean, median) all being well above the neutral point of 3: comfort (4.16, 4.5), confidence (4.30, 4.5) and curiosity (4.37, 5) towards neurology. 90.8% participants reported it to be an overall enriching experience (scoring 4.49, 5).

Our pilot study elucidates the potential of interactive trivia-based learning tools in reducing Neurophobia, as demonstrated by the reported improvements in comfort, confidence, and curiosity towards Neurology post-intervention. Future efforts will focus on validating these promising preliminary results and assessing the long-term impact by incorporating larger sample sizes, control groups, extended and periodic follow-up, and comprehensive feedback; further exploring the impact of the intervention on medical education.