Evaluation of factors influencing the guide to read biomedical English literature course for Chinese new medical postgraduates—a multiple regression analysis

BACKGROUND: There is a dearth of published literature that demonstrates the impact of a Guide to Reading Biomedical English Literature course on new Chinese medical postgraduates. Keeping this gap in mind, the objectives of this study were to assess the factors associated with course effectiveness using the teacher, postgraduate and organizational factors. METHODS: This study was conducted at Nanjing Medical University from December 2014 to December 2015. The participants were 440 new graduate students from different medical specialties. At baseline, each student was assessed for teacher factors, individual factors and organizational factors using a self-administered structured scored anonymous questionnaire. After that, Pearson chi-square analysis was conducted to evaluate the factors that impact teacher factors (knowledge level, teaching style, individualized teaching, logical teaching, heuristic teaching, literature difficulty, bilingual teaching), individual factors (gender, attitude toward studying, previewing literature, English literacy level) and course management (such as teaching objectives and assessment system) on this course. Furthermore, multiple logistic regression analyses were performed to determine the impact of the above factors on our outcome variables (knowledge level, teaching style, individualized teaching, heuristic teaching, study attitude, previewing literature, management). RESULTS: Nearly all of the participants (420 of 440, 95.5%) thought this course was helpful for learning to read scientific literature and understanding scientific research design. Multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that the participants perception of the course as effective was associated with teachers’ high knowledge level (Adjusted Odds Ratio, AOR = 49.673; 95% confidence interval, 95% CI = 4.28, 575.90). In addition, heuristic teaching was found to be significantly associated with a positive teaching effect of teaching (AOR = 12.76; 95% CI = 1.78, 91.64). Furthermore, the participants perception of the course as effective was associated with positive attitude toward studying (AOR = 25.004; 95% CI = 2.51, 249.09). Previewing literature was also associated with course effectiveness (AOR = 0.02; 95% CI = 0.04, 0.11). CONCLUSIONS: This study indicated that the course effectiveness of the Guide for Reading Biomedical English Literature was associated with i) teachers’ knowledge, ii) heuristic teaching, iii) students’ positive attitude, and iv) students’ previewing literature. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12909-019-1731-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.