Early Clinical Exposure: A Tool To Learn Biochemistry: A Small Group Study.

ABSTRACT

Abstracts Background: Didactic lectures occur as passive transmission of knowledge to 1st MBBS students. Biochemistry studied by such lectures becomes difficult to remember and recall. Retention rate is more when learner is actually involved in the learning process by doing. To bridge the gap between the existing teaching methodology and that required for competency based approach, we thought about early clinical exposure as an active learning method. Methodology: Total 50 students visited hospital for active learning, to observe and note down the information about his history, laboratory investigations, and treatment from physician’s interaction with patient. Diabetes mellitus - the clinical condition related to topic ‘Carbohydrate metabolism’ was selected for this activity. Nonparticipating students considered as control group. Pre & post test results were compared in control as well as in study groups. Post test results of both groups were compared to evaluate the effectiveness of new teaching – learning method over the traditional one. Results: Difference between pre and post test results of control group was nonsignificant, while those of the study group were highly significant (p < 0.0001). Post test results of study group were improved with high significance (p < 0.0001). Conclusion: In ‘container –dispenser’ type of didactic lectures students were not able to retain sufficient knowledge only by passive transmission. Hence there was no improvement in the performance of control group. Hospital scenario and the observation of physician and patient interaction provides, stimulus rich environment for learning. This stimulus may help them to correlate the knowledge acquired in the didactic lectures to clinical context. So there was significant improvement in the post test score of study group than pre test score, and also than post test score of control group. This active learning method, presented herein has proved to be an attractive and useful approach to facilitate the teaching –learning biochemistry.