EARLY CLINICAL EXPOSURE FOR FIRST-YEAR MBBS STUDENTS

Gajare Rupali, Bhattacharya Srabani* and Sundaram Kartikeyan

ABSTRACT

This comparative, before-and-after study (without controls) was conducted in a medical college in Western India to study the difference in scores after traditional didactic lectures (by a pre-test) and integrated teaching with early clinical exposure (by a post-test). The participants included all first-year MBBS students, aged 18 years and above, of either sex, who gave written informed consent. After clarifying the purpose of the study and obtaining written informed consent, traditional didactic lectures were delivered as per syllabus for the first-year MBBS course. Following this, the students took a pre-test that comprised ten questions (two marks per question; total 20 marks). After the pre-test, integrated teaching with early clinical exposure was conducted on the same topic. This was followed by a post-test that used a questionnaire that was identical to that of the pre-test. The differences in overall pre- and post-test scores were highly significant (p<0.0001). The pre-test exhibited significant gender difference in scores (p<0.001), but this was not significant (p=0.219) in the post-test.

Keywords: Early clinical exposure, First year MBBS.