ASSIMILATION OF KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTION TOWARDS EARLY CLINICAL EXPOSURE IN 1ST YEAR MBBS STUDENTS.

Abstract

INTRODUCTION- Early clinical exposure (ECE) introduced in competency-based medical education by National Medical Commission (NMC) allows students to understand basic sciences from an applicative perspective. The ability to learn concepts with their future application will generate interest and provide greater retention and comprehension in the learner. Early exposure to patients and their families will have great impact on the professional growth of students. It also incorporates some aspects of social contexts of patient care into undergraduate teaching program.

OBJECTIVE-To assess learning of students after ECE session and collect the feedback from students and analyse their perception and attitude towards ECE session.

METHODOLOGY- A prospective experimental study was conducted in Department of Biochemistry, AIMS, Mohali to assess the learning of students after they attended ECE session. To collect data from students, the questionnaires consisting of multiple-choice questions from the topic of IEM (Inborn Errors of Metabolism) that was taught during this session (pre and post ECE session questionnaires) were shared to analyse students’ learning. Another questionnaire was for feedback with five-point Likert scale to assess the students’ perception and attitude toward ECE; along with two open ended questions. Satisfaction index (SI) was calculated to know the effectiveness of the session as number of participants who agree and strongly agree to the feedback questionnaire. The quantitative data was analysed using paired student’s t-test. The P-value less than 0.05 was considered as significant.

RESULT- A total of 88 students of MBBS first professional attended the session. The differences in marks of each student in pre and post-test were analysed. It was found that there was significant improvement in the performance of students in the test after attending ECE session. In the students' feedback questionnaire, 79.5% of the students agreed ECE correlated applied aspects of Biochemistry, 73.9% got motivated to learn the applied aspects, 69.3% found ECE an effective learning tool. ECE encouraged 68.2% students to participate more in such type of teaching methods and will help them in lifelong learning of the topics when integrated with applied aspects.  

CONCLUSION- For first-year medical students, the ECE program was presented as an alternate strategy to support didactic teaching in biochemistry. According to the study, it was worthwhile and students also enjoyed it. Other basic topics might also benefit from this approach. Conducting multi-institutional studies with larger and more diverse student populations would enhance the relevance of the findings. Longitudinal studies tracking students’ academic performance, clinical skills, and professional development over multiple years would help determine the sustained benefits of ECE, particularly in areas like lifelong learning and patient care.