Background & Objective: Medical education complexity gets worsen when confronting with a lot of information to be memorized and needs to have new techniques for learning and remembering. Mnemonic instruction is a way to help students to remember the information or vocabulary more effectively and easily. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of mnemonic instruction among interns in the management of patients with poisoning.

Methods: A quasi-experimental study performed during 24 months among 120 emergency medicine interns in Rasool Akram Hospital, Tehran, Iran. We evaluated the knowledge of two groups of interns (n = 60) about management of patients with poisoning two times with a self-administered questionnaire (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.78). At baseline, all the participants were filled the questionnaire as their baseline knowledge of poisoning management; then, both groups participated in a standard education course for poisoning management. In addition, we conducted an additional physical class for case group and taught them about the mnemonics instruction in poisoning. At the end of ward rotation, all participants answered the same questionnaire and the scores were compared between the groups for each time and within the groups for each test.

Results: Mean scores were statistically different between the two times of testing in each group
(P < 0.001). In case group, the difference between pre- and post-test was (4.53 ± 3.95) statistically less than the control group (6.73 ± 3.26) (P < 0.002).

Conclusion: Using mnemonics was not effective enough to help interns to remember about management of poisonings better than usual educational activities.