Preclinical Medical Students’ Achievement to Learning Outcomes in Special Tracts of Rural Doctors.

BACKGROUND

Preclinical medical students are introduced to application of knowledge in communication skills, and clinical examination in third year of the curriculum including gaining clinical experiences without difference in learning environment and faculty administration to achieving personal and professional success.

OBJECTIVE

To assess perception of medical students and the learning gap between One District One Doctor (ODOD) and Collaborative Project to Increase Production of Rural Doctors (CPIRD) when a special tract is used for rural doctors to achieve learning outcomes and management of the Institute of Medicine to study medicine including academic curriculum, environmental, and social factors.

MATERIAL AND METHOD

A cross-sectional study of third years students of ODOD and CPIRD groups were recruited for this study. Self-administered questionnaire in domain of learning outcomes, motivation, and self-confidence including faculty administration were given to all the participants to assess and analyze the perception of preclinical students. t-test and bivariate analysis were used to evaluate the results.

RESULTS

Thirty-six CPIRD (60%) and 24 ODOD (40%) participants completed the questionnaire. The CPIRD medical students’ perceptions were higher in learning outcomes when compared with ODOD in all domains of cognitive, interpersonal skill, professionalism, and ethic aspect but not statistically significant. Grades before admission were different in special tracts of rural doctors; CPIRD medical students had higher examination scores before admission (63.73±3.37 vs. 56.76±5.22, p<0.05) compared with ODOD group. However, there was no difference in Grade point average (GPA)between the two groups (3.32±0.35 vs. 3.23±0.29, p = 0.33) after finishing in preclinical year. There was no difference between the two groups of medical students in perception in faculty administration including teacher preparation, learning environment, and social environment.

CONCLUSION

No learning gap in learning outcomes, learning environment, and faculty administration between two groups of special tracts of rural doctors after finishing preclinical medical year even when the examination score before admission were different in both groups. After studying in the same learning environment, there was no difference of all learning outcomes and GPA in third year of preclinical medical students.