Exploring undergraduate medical students’ perception of learning procedural skills and its outcomes in clinical settings

Introduction: Learning procedural skills is one of the essentialaspects of undergraduate medical education. However, learningprocedural skills in clinical settings is less widely considered.This study aimed to explore the Iranian undergraduate medicalstudents’ perception of learning procedural skills and its outcomesin three universities of medical sciences in Iran.Methods: A descriptive exploratory qualitative methodologywith an in-depth unstructured, face-to-face interview, and contentanalysis was used in this study. Sixteen students in clinicalphases of general medical education programs from educationalhospitals were selected using purposive sampling. According tothe preferences of the participants, the interviews were conductedin medical schools or in hospitals.Results: The students participating in this study included 7females and 9 males (totally 16 people) with a mean age of 23.7years old with a range of 21-27 years. The three main themes ofthis study were “the gap of transferring formal teaching fromskill lab to clinical placement”, “learning self-leading proceduralskills in clinical settings”, and “students’ dissatisfaction withpatients’ vulnerability” with 8 subthemes which were extractedand explained based on the students’ perception.Conclusion: Unsupervised and self-learning by medical studentsand weakness in controlling the learning process have undesirableresults for patients and students.