Medical students’ perceptions on Clinical Skills Teaching (CST) sessions at the College of Medicine, Nursing, and Health Sciences, Fiji National University

ABSTRACT

Introduction and Aim@#Early exposure to clinical skills teaching (CST) helps medical students to apply their knowledge in basic sciences in a real situation. One of the big challenges that always needs to be considered is their ability to examine a patient appropriately and pick up physical signs, as well as the analysis and interpretation of the physical signs. Due to the lack of existing research in this area, this study is aimed at understanding medical students’ perceptions towards delivered CST courses at the College of Medicine, Nursing, and Health Sciences (CMNHS), Fiji National University (FNU).@*Methodology@#This descriptive cross sectional study was conducted among the Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) degree students in year 4 and 5 who have done internal medicine rotations in 2014 and also to the year 6 students who were doing their clinical attachments at Lautoka hospital in 2014. A self-administrated questionnaire was used to collect the data. Five-point Likert scaled questions were used to measure the medical students’ attitudes and perceptions towards delivered CST sessions. An information sheet and written consent form were used before the collection of the data. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistical tests. @*Results@#Eighty one students participated in this study; the majority of them were aged 23-24 years (48.2%). More than sixty one percent were females and over thirty-eight percent were males. Forty percent of the participants were MBBS year 4. The majority of the participants believed that the CST was well organized (72.9%) and was clear (79%). The majority of participants (92.6%) believed that the clinical content was relevant and 85.24% of the participants believed that they were able to apply what they learned from the clinical skills sessions during the clinical years. Overall, 75.4% of the respondents believed that the clinical skills teaching sessions were effective while 3.6% disagreed. @*Conclusion@#The results of this study showed high positive perceptions of medical students towards the organization, clarity, the relevance of the content, and the effectiveness of CST sessions. This study will help the School of Medical Sciences to examine other methods of CST to promote students’ clinical skills.