INTEGRATING CLINICAL SKILLS TRAINING IN SKILLS LABORATORY AND PRIMARY HEALTH CARE SETTINGS TO PREPARE MEDICAL STUDENTS ENTERING HOSPITAL CLERKSHIP

March 3, 2010 at 1:37 am
1D. Widyandana, 2G.D. Majoor, 2A.J.J.A. Scherpbier

1 Dept. Medical Education & Skills Lab, Faculty of Medicine, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

2Institute for Education, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

Keywords:

Clinical skills training, preparation, undergraduate students, primary care, attachment program

Introduction

Undergraduate medical students’ can practice their clinical skills in a skills laboratory when a school has this facility. Finishing pre-clinical phase, the students enter clinical rotations in real clinical setting. Current studies show that transition process from campus into real clinical setting can cause problems for students, they often feel anxious and not prepared enough to face real patients in reality. Integrating skills training between skills laboratory and primary health care setting could be a solution for this problem.

Objective

To show the effects of clinical attachment program with integrated skills training in Primary Health Care (PHC) settings on student’s level of preparedness to enter clinical rotation.

Method

59 undergraduate medical students in Faculty of Medicine, Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia, randomly choosen to practice their clinical skills in PHC setting before entering clerkship for 5 weeks (11 days). Preparation for Hospital Practice Questionnaire (Hill et al, 1998) will be used for pretest and post test to assess student’s level of preparedness entering clerkship, that consists of interpersonal skills, confident, collaboration, management, science, prevention, holistic care, and self directed learning. The clinical supervisor assesses students’ improvements 5 times during attachments program in PHC.

Result

Finishing clinical attachment in PHCs, students have significant improvement in their sense of preparedness entering clinical rotations (p<0.05). Average score from the teacher also support that result, scores from clinical supervisors indicate that students have significant improvement (p<0.05) in all eight areas of preparedness during practice in PHC settings.

Conclusion

Undergraduate students are more and better prepared for entering hospital clerkship after having clinical attachments in PHC settings.

Published in 7th APMEC Conference 2010, NUS, Singapore

as Poster Presentation. This study conducted as apart of PhD study in Maastricth University.

Further Information, please contact: widyandana@yahoo.com