Survey of student perception of medical education environment among emergency medicine residents of an academic medical centre in Northern India

BACKGROUND The specialty of emergency medicine is in its infancy state in the long history of the Indian health sciences education system. Little analytical published data is available at the moment in India regarding the quality of medical education as perceived by the students. Roff et al. (Med Teach 19: 295-299, 1997) developed a methodology using a Delphi panel to standardize the measurement of medical education known as the Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM), which is widely utilized. The purpose of this survey is to investigate student perceptions of medical education environment among emergency medicine residents of an academic medical centre in Northern India using the DREEM tool. METHODS The DREEM questionnaire was administered to the students undergoing 3-year post-graduate emergency medicine training in our residency programme. A total of 35 students enrolled from all 3 years of the residency programme completed the survey in May 2013. The results were analysed using STATA 9.0. RESULTS The reliability coefficient which was calculated using Cronbach's alpha for the totality of items of this study was 0.92, which indicates high internal consistency. The mean (95 % CI) for the overall DREEM was 139.8 (133.3, 146.2), which showed excellent educational environment among the medical students. CONCLUSIONS The DREEM score is a universal tool for assessment of education provided by health science institutes. With a total score of 139.8, the study conducted at our institute showed comparable results to the original DREEM study conducted by Roff et al. The good scores in all the five subscales reveal an excellent educational programme and learning environment as perceived by the students enrolled at our institution.