Perception of Phase 1 MBBS Students Regarding the Foundation Course: A Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

Introduction: A one-month Foundation Course (FC) was introduced by Medical Council of India (MCI) in its Competency Based Medical Education (CBME), from the academic session 2019 onwards. The course was introduced with the purpose to orient fresh MBBS students about the challenging academic environment of medical colleges, apart from giving them the opportunity to early assimilation, peer-communication, group-interaction and introducing them to some basic skills. Aim: To obtain the perception of the students about their experience on the foundation course, and to collect feedback for further improvements in the next sessions. Materials and Methods: A questionnaire-based observational cross-sectional study was conducted at the end of FC from April 2021 to July 2021. The participants were 92 newly joined phase 1 MBBS students at Rajmata Shrimati Devendra Kumari Singhdeo Government Medical College, Ambikapur, Chhattisgarh, India. The experience and the perception of students about the FC was taken as feedback, obtained on a prestructured and validated questionnaire consisting of 33 closed-ended questions and distributed over five modules. The feedback to these questions was to be answered as a single response based on the fivepoint Likert scale with decreasing order of agreement. Data analysis was done by using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16.0 software. Results: The mean age of study participants was 19.05±1.21 years. Thirty four (36.9)% of the study participants graded the overall experience to FC as highly satisfactory. Among them 14 were males and 20 were females. The feedback on the orientation module and field visit module scored the average mean (4.2) on a 5-point Likert scale. While the feedback on the module on computer, language, learning and extra-curricular activities obtained the lowest average mean score (3.6). Conclusion: The FC is a welcome change in the curriculum according to the newly introduced CBME. The topics such as ‘cadaver as first teacher’, ‘visit to dissection hall’, ‘visit to blood bank’, ‘role of doctors in society’ and ‘Basic Life Support (BLS)’ scored the higher mean value, while ‘substance abuse and cyber-addiction’ and ‘sports and hobbies’ scored the lower mean values on a five-point Likert scale. The FC helped to assimilate and acclimatise the newly joined phase 1 MBBS students with the main stream of medical course.

Keywords

• curriculum
• indian medical graduate
• likert scale
• skill