An Innovative Crossword Puzzle Tool to Evaluate the Undergraduate Medical Student’s Knowledge in Forensic Medicine

Aims: The main aim is to expose the medical student after completion of their forensic medicine posting to the crossword puzzle and to study their responses given in feedback questionnaire with an effort to introduce an innovative short answer question for the end of posting examination.

Study Design: A Prospective 'survey based questionnaire' study.

Methodology: In this study, 56 students of forensic medicine were given a crossword puzzle exercise to solve individually. They were given 45 minutes to solve a puzzle having 32 words to fill in with the help of appropriate keys given. The students were allowed to sit far apart and use of the internet, mobile, books etc. was not allowed. They were asked to fill in the feedback questionnaire. Crossword puzzle contains 16 horizontals and 16 vertical words and 32 keys.

Results: After completion of the crossword puzzle, all the data was analyzed in SPSS program. In this result, we considered a total of grade 5 and 4 only. Out of 56 students, only 16 students could not score passing marks. Out of total 56 students, 91.1% (n=51) students agreed that they enjoyed this puzzle and 94.7% (n=53) agreed that this improves their forensic vocabulary and comprehensive knowledge. Out of total students 64.2% (n=36), students liked to have such puzzle as an examination question. Lastly, 92.8% (n=52) of the students agreed that it is a useful tool to learn forensic medicine.

Conclusion: Majority of participants liked the crossword as an examination questions. It improves memory power, performance and critical thinking of student with fun. This can be tried as examination question in end posting examination.