After McMaster University introduced Problem-Based Learning(PBL) about three decades ago; in the year 2001, China Medical University (hereafter, CMU) implemented PBL to 4th year medical student (class of M41) as a trial study in comparison to traditional lecture teaching(class of M40) of previous year to determine the best possible curriculum for Taiwanese medical students(medical training in Taiwan has 7 years in total, clerkship and internship are 6th year and 7th year respectively). After 2 years in PBL training, class of M41 enters hospital clerkship training at 2003; a questionnaire study was conducted in September of 2003 to the tutors of M41 and M40. This study focuses on five domains in clinical training performance: history taking, physical examination, diagnosis, interpreting physiological and biochemical data and both oral and writing communication skills between colleagues and patients. The results of this study, with statistical significant difference, prove that class of M41 has better performance as compared to previous year clerkship student (class of M40) in these five domains. In light of this study, we can state that cooperating PBL program into classroom teaching is more favorable than traditional classroom lecture alone. The evidence in support of our results will be further discussed in the conference.
