European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

EARLY CLINICAL EXPOSURE –A EARLY STEP FROM FIRST YEAR MBBS, TOWARDS A COMPETENT MEDICAL GRADUATE.

*Dr. Sushama Dhonde, Dr. P. E. Jagatp, Dr. Chidanand Awalekar, Dr. G. J. Belwalkar, Dr. N. S. Nagane and V. S Bhandare

ABSTRACT

Problem- A physician always seeks for the biochemical basis of the disease and accordingly manages the patient; and to be a competent physician, sound knowledge of Biochemistry is crucial. To gain this knowledge students have to study biochemistry interestingly. Students will study more interestingly and interest will be developed if they know the relevance of the subject in the practice. To make aware students about the relevance of the Biochemistry and stimulate their interest in the subject studies we planned to introduce “early clinical exposure” for the selected clinically relevant topics as a teaching tool. Method – After the ethical clearance, based on random sampling sixty students from first year MBBS were selected for the study, with written consent. They were divided into 2 groups each with 30 students. Firstly group A is exposed to early clinical exposure for the clinical context of the topic while same topic was taught to group B by didactic lecture. For the next topic group B was exposed to early clinical exposure for the clinical context of the topic while same topic was taught to group A by didactic lecture. Evaluation Plan – Effectiveness of the new method was assessed by the post test for both groups for both topics; which indicates the increased ability of the students to solve the questions based on case studies. Acceptance and satisfaction of faculty as well as students was assessed by the feedback questionnaire. Results - Performance of the students for the topics learnt by early clinical exposure was significantly higher than those topics learnt by traditional methods of teaching. (For the topic DM p< 0.007 and for Jaundice p < 0.000) Feedback reveals the acceptance and satisfaction of students and faculty. Discussion - Students were exposed to clinical environment where they observed the patient, his/her history, investigation reports, doctor patient relationship, communication skills and visited clinical Biochemistry laboratory. With this student can realize the relevance of biochemistry knowledge in clinical condition. Early clinical exposure allows higher order of thinking, covering higher levels of cognitive domain – application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Thus early clinical exposure encourages them to acquire the clinical and soft skills as well as to some extent laboratory skills; consequently help to achieve the goal of competency based medical education.

Keywords: Early clinical exposure at the first year level helps to establish a way towards the competent medical graduate.