Adequacy of education in musculoskeletal medicine
PainSci summary of Matzkin 2005?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided at the bottom of the page, as often as possible.
From the abstract: “ … training in musculoskeletal medicine is inadequate in both medical school and nonorthopaedic residency training programs.”
original abstract†Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
BACKGROUND: Basic musculoskeletal knowledge is essential to the practice of medicine. A validated musculoskeletal cognitive examination was given to medical students, residents, and staff physicians in multiple disciplines of medicine to assess the adequacy of their musculoskeletal medicine training.
METHODS: The examination was given to 334 volunteers consisting of medical students, residents, and staff physicians. Analysis of the data collected and comparisons across disciplines were performed.
RESULTS: The average cognitive examination score was 57%. Sixty-nine participants (21%) obtained a score of >/=73.1%, the recommended mean passing score. Of the sixty-nine with a passing score, forty (58%) were orthopaedic residents and staff physicians with an overall average score of 94%. Differences in the average scores for the orthopaedic residents compared with all other specialties were significant (p < 0.001). The average score was 69% for the 124 participants who stated that they had taken a required or an elective course in orthopaedics during their training compared with an average score of 50% for the 210 who had not taken an orthopaedic course (p < 0.001). When the scores of those in orthopaedics were excluded, the average score for the participants who had taken an orthopaedic course was 59%; this difference remained significant (p < 0.001).
CONCLUSIONS: Seventy-nine percent of the participants failed the basic musculoskeletal cognitive examination. This suggests that training in musculoskeletal medicine is inadequate in both medical school and nonorthopaedic residency training programs. Among the nonorthopaedists, scores were significantly better if they had taken a medical school course or residency rotation in orthopaedics, suggesting that a rotation in orthopaedics would improve the general level of musculoskeletal knowledge.
related content
These two articles on PainScience.com cite Matzkin 2005 as a source:
- PS Alternative Medicine’s Choice: Alternative to What? — Alternative to what? To cold and impersonal medicine? Or to science and reason?
- PS The Medical Blind Spot for Aches, Pains & Injuries — Most physicians are unqualified to care for many common pain and injury problems, especially the more stubborn and tricky ones
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
- A Bayesian model-averaged meta-analysis of the power pose effect with informed and default priors: the case of felt power. Gronau 2017 Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology.
- The neck and headaches. Bogduk 2014 Neurol Clin.
- Agreement of self-reported items and clinically assessed nerve root involvement (or sciatica) in a primary care setting. Konstantinou 2012 Eur Spine J.
- Effect of NSAIDs on Recovery From Acute Skeletal Muscle Injury: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Morelli 2017 Am J Sports Med.
- Association of Spinal Manipulative Therapy With Clinical Benefit and Harm for Acute Low Back Pain: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Paige 2017 JAMA.