Early Clinical Exposure as a Learning Tool to Teach Neuroanatomy for First Year MBBS Students

Early clinical exposure: Dynamics, opportunities, and challenges in modern medical education

INTRODUCTION

Applications of early clinical exposure (ECE) are wide-ranging and reflect the important role that ECE plays in medical education. This review article aimed to highlight the dynamics, opportunities, and challenges of ECE in medical education.

STUDY METHODOLOGY

This review article was conducted through a comprehensive search of electronic databases including PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google search engine. The keywords used for the search were "early clinical exposure," "medical education," "clinical skills," "patient contact," and "medical students. The inclusion criteria for selecting the articles were that they should be written in English, peer-reviewed, and provide insights into the dynamics, opportunities, and challenges of ECE in medical education.

RESULTS

ECE allows students to gain a deeper understanding of the patient experience, and to develop empathy and a patient-centered approach to care. ECE can also help to improve recruitment and retention of medical students, by providing a more engaging and rewarding learning experience.

CONCLUSION

ECE is a promising teaching method that has the potential to improve clinical skills and patient outcomes. However, it also poses some challenges that must be addressed to ensure its effective implementation.

Early clinical exposure as a highly interesting educational program for undergraduate medical students: an interventional study

BACKGROUND

Training professional medical experts is so much dependent on the efficacy of the medical curriculum. Bearing this in mind, we aimed to evaluate the attitude of the undergraduate medical students toward the Early clinical exposure (ECE) program as a facilitator transition to the clinical phase.

METHODS

This quasi-experimental study was conducted on undergraduate medical students at the Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran who were transferring from the pre-clinical course to the externship course from 2021 to 2022 by census method (i.e. all eligible students were included and no sampling was performed). An eight-session ECE intervention was performed on the participants by two professors of the Internal medicine department of Ghaem Hospital, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran. The participants' attitude toward the program and the program quality was assessed with the valid and reliable scale developed by Mirzazadeh et al. (Cronbach's alpha = 0.72). Statistical analyses were performed by SPSS software (version.16) with a statistically significant level of less than 0.05.

RESULTS

A total of 118 undergraduate medical students were enrolled in the study. Our results revealed that this program could familiarize (n = 95,81.2%)the students with the role of basic sciences knowledge in clinical settings, and 104(88.9%) participants believed that this intervention could motivate them toward learning more. The data revealed that this program was highly interesting for international students. There was a significant differentiation between Iranian and international students in familiarity with doctoring skills in medicine(P < 0.001), familiarity with the roles and responsibilities of clinical students(P < 0.001), and utility of early clinical exposure and providing more experiences(P < 0.001). According to the students' reports, the major strengths of the program were familiarizing themselves with the clinical fields, having excellent instructors, and performing admirable training. On the other hand, the major weakness of the program was the short duration and the high population of participants in each group.

CONCLUSIONS

The ECE program had a positive impact on the students' satisfaction with medical education, and it also enhanced their understanding of the role they will play as future physicians. Therefore, we recommend that this program be implemented as a part of the medical education curriculum in medical universities.

Impacts of early clinical exposure on undergraduate student professionalism-a qualitative study

INTRODUCTION

Early clinical exposure (ECE), or authentic human contact in a social or clinical context during preclinical training, has been adopted by many medical schools. This study aims to investigate how medical students' sense of professionalism changed after ECE intervention, with the aim of informing curriculum design to enhance student awareness of the importance of medical professionalism.

METHOD

Focus groups of ECE students were held to collect data for the study. All participants read interview guidelines before starting. During the focus groups, the students discussed their medical obligations as perceived throughout the course, which offered a choice between four different ECE tracks. They were then asked to report their understanding of the situations they encountered during the course and reflect on their implications.

RESULTS

Six focus groups of 22 students in total from a medical school in northern Taiwan were held shortly after the students completed an ECE course in September 2019. From their responses, 10 categories relating to medical professionalism were deduced categorized under 5 major dimensions. An additional 8 sub-dimensions on attitudes and 2 sub-dimensions on personal well-being were also identified as new categories separate from but related to medical professionalism. After the ECE intervention, about 59% of participants redefined their understanding of medical professionalism.

CONCLUSION

ECE and intensive interaction with key stakeholders, including patients and their families, help students in the early stages of medical education form and cultivate a sense of medical professionalism. However, the relationship between participants' personalities, motivations, and clinical activities requires further investigation.

Exploring faculty perspectives on competency-based medical education: A report from India

INTRODUCTION

Medical education in India is experiencing a paradigm shift from traditional curriculum to competency-based medical education (CBME). It de-emphasizes time-based training and promises greater accountability, flexibility, and learner centeredness. Faculty development is integral in the context of CBME. Considering faculty perceptions toward the new CBME and addressing the difficulties will play a vital role in successful implementation.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A cross-sectional study was carried out among 297 teaching faculty in 91 medical colleges across 20 states all over India between February and July 2020. A structured validated questionnaire on CBME was used to collect the responses through Google forms and was exported and analyzed in Microsoft Excel.

RESULTS

More than 80% opined that Faculty members in departments are not adequate for successful CBME implementation. Reflective learning, early clinical exposure, and elective posting were accepted by 60.2%, 70.4%, and 45.5% of the faculty, respectively. Around 81.8% welcomed horizontal integration, whereas only 54.2% favored vertical integration during the Phase I MBBS.

CONCLUSION

Few reforms such as curtailing the duration of foundation course, sensitization of all medical teachers through faculty development programs, better synchronized vertical integration, increasing the strength of faculty in each department, and adequate infrastructure for skills laboratory can be undertaken as per faculty suggestions.

Effectiveness of early clinical exposure in improving attitude and professional skills of medical students in current Indian medical education set up

Introduction:

As a part of education reforms Medical Council of India has introduced early clinical exposure (ECE) as an important intervention in Medical teaching. It is stated in the literature, ECE helps to relieve stress of the students pertaining to patient handling, developing real-time clinical reasoning ability, communication skills, professional attitude, and patient empathy. With this view, this study was planned to assess effectiveness of early clinical exposure in improving attitude and professional skills in the current Indian medical education set up.

Methods:

This cross-sectional study was carried out amongst 820 students for three years duration. Students were randomly divided into two groups viz. ECE exposed group (Group A) and Traditional teaching exposed group (Group B). We conducted periodical sessions (Each duration: 60 minutes). We used a validated 10-point questionnaire for feedback collection.

Results:

Using perception-based 10-point questionnaire based on Likert scale we found, 93.21% of students strongly agreed that the method of ECE teaching aroused interest in learning. 86.03% of students strongly agreed that the method of ECE teaching technique helped in better retention of topic. 89.91% of students strongly agreed that the method of ECE teaching imparts better clinical context. 92.75% of students strongly agreed that the method of ECE teaching allows better assimilation of knowledge gained during learning. With ECE-based teaching 87.42% of students found highly satisfied while 81.22% of students found highly competent about the knowledge and skills thus acquired via this teaching methodology. 95.11% of students liked ECE teaching methodology and these students enjoyed it a lot and with interest.

Conclusion:

This study concluded that early clinical exposure is the most important teaching tool in improving attitude and professional skills in the current Indian medical education set up.

Exploring the learners' perspectives on competency-based medical education

BACKGROUND

A novel innovation in medical education was initiated by the Medical Council of India after 21 years. Competency-based medical education (CBME) is an effective outcome-based strategy, which requires integration of knowledge, attitude, skills, values, and responsiveness. The aim was to assess the students' perspectives on competency-based medical curriculum.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted among 1^st year MBBS students (2019-2020 batch). A validated questionnaire was administered through Google link among phase I medical students of various medical colleges across India by multistage sampling.

RESULTS

A total of 987 students from 74 medical colleges in India responded. Nearly three-fourths opined that foundation course (FC), attitude ethics communication module, and early clinical exposure were necessary. Horizontal integration was more appreciated to vertical integration. Maintaining log books was perceived as time-consuming and cumbersome.

CONCLUSION

The CBME when meticulously adopted will inspire student enthusiasm for learning. Few reforms such as curtailing the duration of FC, diffuse sessions on stress and time management, better synchronized vertical integration, and an exemplary implementation of adult learning techniques can be undertaken.