Students’ perception regarding skill lab training in medical education

Abstract

Introduction: Clinical skills refer to the skills required for a clinician to manage a complete patient encounter. Clinical skill laboratories provide the facility to medical students and medical staff to learn the clinical skills before applying them on patients. Objectives: To evaluate perception of medical students regarding skill lab training. Study Design: Cross -sectional study. Study Setting: Wah Medical College. Period: January 2017 to June 2017. Study Subject: Students of Final Year M.B.B.S. Sample Size: 114 students. Sampling Technique: Convenient sampling. Data Collection Procedure: With informed consent of participants, questionnaires were filled by students themselves. Questionnaire was comprised of two parts; first part comprised of demographic data, second part comprised of 18 questions to determine perception of medical students about skill lab training. The responses of 18 questions were measured on four-point Likert scale from strongly disagree to agree. Data Analysis: Data was analyzed by using SPSS version 19, frequencies and percentages were calculated. The Chi square- goodness of fit test for one sample was applied on various levels of agreement. The p value of less than 0.05 was considered as significant. Results: The mean age of 114 students was 23.4 years with minimum age of 21 years and maximum of 26 years. Male students were 45(39%) and 69(61%) were female students. Out of 114 medical students108 (94.8%) students preferred to practice in skill lab before performing it on patient and they also had an opinion that the mentor must be friendly and helpful during teaching. Among them 107 (93.9%) students desired that procedures in the skill lab should be performed by the mentors first in front of students and 103 (90.4%) students thought that training of practical skills improve their learning. Out of them 94(82.5%) students believed that skill lab training increased their motivation to become a doctor, 102 (89.5%) students thought that skill lab practice provides a feeling of security for learning process and 100 (87.7%) students had an opinion that it should be a compulsory part of medical curriculum and even it should be started from the first year of the medical education. P value of level of agreement of all the variables regarding perception about skill lab training was found to be < 0.001 which was statistically significant. Conclusion: The students believed that skill lab training is very useful for them and they preferred to practice on manikin before dealing with the patients.