Determining Minimum Skill Achievements in Advanced Clinical Clerkship(Externship) in School of Medicine Using Logbooks

Introduction: Curriculum assessment is part of educational systems. In the absence of an assessment of present situations, any intervention would be futile. This study was done to determine achievement rate of medical students in advanced clerkship (externship) courses through using logbooks. Methods: This retrospective cross-sectional descriptive study was done on medical students' logbooks between June and December 2010 in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. The students were passing their externship courses. Random sampling was done and 30 logbooks from departments of orthopedics, ENT, neurology, anesthesiology and toxicology, infectious diseases, and internal medicine were analyzed descriptive statistics and SPSS were used for data analysis. Results: 180 logbook tables were analyzed. Average number of skill performances supervised once or more were found to be : 8 (out of 10) skills in anesthesiology and toxicology, 5(out of 11) skills in infectios diseases,7(out of 20)skills in internal medicine, 8 (out of 13) skills in orthopedics, 11 (out of 11) in ENT, and 10 (out of 10) in neurology. Conclusion: Findings showed that actual skills achievement is far from ideal in the studied departments. Therefore, interventional measures such as involving residents in instruction, more practical instructions in CSLC, using instructional films,arranging hospital shifts for interns ,applying OSCEs, etc. shoud be taken.