Investigation for clinical practice of pulmonary function tests in undergraduate medical education--results from the inquiries to 91 medical institutes with the Department of Laboratory Medicines in Japan

摘要

Pulmonary function tests(PFTs), especially spirometry, play important roles in screening and diagnosing the patients with bronchial asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It is reported, however, that only 38% of the general physicians utilizes spirometry. Based on the assumption that clinical practices might be insufficient to learn PFTs in the undergraduate education periods, we made inquiries to 91 institutes with the departments of laboratory medicine in April 2003. The reply was from 67 institutes(73.6%). In 57 institutes(85.1%) they prepared a clinical practice curriculum for the students. The periods for the practice were 1 week in 38 institutes(56.7%) and 2 weeks in 10(17.5%). In 36 institutes(76.6%). In 47 institutes in which physiological examinations were included in the curriculum, PFTs were performed as one of the clinical practices. In all the institutes they employed either spirometry or flow-volume curve test. In 20 institutes(55.6%), approximately 2 hrs were assigned to the practice of PFTs. In 24 institutes (66.7%), the clinical technologists participated in educating the students. The main reasons why they did not employ PFTs in the practice were shortness of teaching staffs(7 institutes, 22.6%) or practicing time(4 institutes, 12.9%). These inquiries prevailed that practices of PFTs were performed mainly by lecture or by observation, since the practice time was insufficient to learn several kinds of PFTs. The Japanese Society of Laboratory Medicine should immediately prepare and popularize a model core curriculum for the practice of PFTs.