# Does an instructional video as a stand-alone tool promote the acquisition of practical clinical skills? A randomised simulation research trial of skills acquisition and short-term retention

## TL;DR

This study finds that instructional videos alone can help medical students learn practical clinical skills, with the best results when combined with self-study.

## Contribution

The study evaluates instructional videos as a standalone tool for skill acquisition and compares it with self-study in a randomized trial.

## Key findings

- Instructional videos alone significantly improved skill acquisition compared to self-study.
- Combining instructional videos with immediate self-study yielded the best results regardless of sequence.
- Short-term retention was better when self-study followed the video.

## Abstract

The effectiveness of instructional videos as a stand-alone tool for the acquisition of practical skills is yet unknown because instructional videos are usually didactically embedded. Therefore, we evaluated the acquisition of the skill of a humeral intraosseous access via video in comparison to that of a self-study with an additional retention test.

After ethical approval, we conducted two consecutive studies. Both were designed as randomised controlled two-armed trials with last-year medical students as independent samples at our institutional simulation centre of a tertiary university hospital centre. In Study 1, we randomly assigned 78 participants to two groups: Vid-Self participants watched an instructional video as an intervention, followed by a test, and after seven days did a self-study as a control, followed by a test. Self-Vid ran through the trial in reverse order.

In Study 2, we investigated the influence of the sequence of the two teaching methods on learning success in a new sample of 60 participants: Vid-Self watched an instructional video and directly afterward did the self-study followed by a test, whereas Self-Vid ran through that trial in reverse order.

In Studies 1 and 2, the primary outcome was the score (worst score = 0, best score = 20) of the test after intervention and control. The secondary outcome in Study 1 was the change in score after seven days.

Study 1: The Vid-Self (Participants n = 42) was superior to the Self-Vid (n = 36) (mean score 14.8 vs. 7.7, p < 0.001). After seven days, Self-vid outperformed Vid-Self (mean score 15.9 vs. 12.5, p < 0.001).

Study 2: The Vid-Self (n = 30) and Self-Vid (n = 30) scores did not significantly differ (mean 16.5 vs. mean 16.5, p = 0.97).

An instructional video as a stand-alone tool effectively promotes the acquisition of practical skills. The best results are yielded by a combination of an instructional video and self-study right after each other, irrespective of sequence.

ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT05066204 (13/04/2021) (Study 1) and NCT04842357 (04/10/2021) (Study 2).

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-024-05714-6.