Early clinical exposure as perceived by Ist year MBBS students during online sessions - A necessity in Covid era

Authors : Shalini Kumar, Shalini Kumar

DOI : 10.18231/j.jeths.2020.024

Volume : 7

Issue : 3

Year : 2020

Page No : 101-105

Background: New CBME curriculum has laid emphasis on early clinical exposure (ECE) in the current year. Thirty hours are dedicated in the curriculum in first year for ECE. Due to Covid-19 pandemic that started in march 2019 the students could not be taken to hospitals for their ECE sessions and all the teaching and practical sessions were shifted to online sessions. So it was decided to give the students ECE through online classes. As it was a totally new experience for both the students and the faculty to take all classes online. A feedback was taken from first year students regarding their first experience for taking the ECE sessions online.
Aim: Introduce the online session for ECE in First year MBBS during the Covid era.
Materials and Methods: A prospective study was done on 90 first year MBBS students who consented for this study in Department of Anatomy, HIMSR, Delhi after getting approval from Institutional Ethical committee. The duration of study was of four months that is between September 2020 to December 2020. ECE sessions were taken for 2 topics i.e foot drop and varicose veins by online mode during the lockdown due to the pandemic. ECE modules for the topics were prepared and sessions were conducted as recommended by MCI. The learning objectives were set and total duration of each session was 3-4 hours. The Questionnaire was prepared and the feed back of these sessions was taken by google forms and statistical analysis was done.
Results: Majority of the students (97%) responded that ECE module was helpful. 66% responded that videos shown in the session has helped them to learn more. 29% students were of opinion that the discussion part of the session has helped them to learn the topic better. 89.2% found the ECE module in making the topic interesting and 49.2% students were of opinion that online sessions should be conducted along with classroom settings.
Conclusion: The students recognized the importance of online ECE sessions during pandemic. They found
these sessions helpful. They found the videos related to clinical cases more useful and helped them in making the topics interesting and motivated them further to read the topic.

Keywords: Early clinical exposure, CBME curriculum.


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