Effectiveness of early clinical exposure in learning respiratory physiology among the newly entrant MBBS students

Introduction: Early Clinical Exposure has been conceptualizedto orient medical students towards actual clinical scenario andhelp them correlate their theoretical knowledge with real lifesituations in early years of MBBS courses. In the present studywe explored the outcome of early clinical exposure in the contextof basic science topics (Physiology) in fresh MBBS entrantsand compared their performance with a conventionally taughtcontrol group.Methods: One hundred fifty voluntary students of 1st year MBBS(2015-16) batch consisted the sample of this study. They weredivided into two groups through the simple random method (usingcomputer generated random number table with roll numbers ofthe students). They were evaluated by MCQ (Multiple ChoiceQuestion) and OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination)before and after being taught a basic Physiology topic (respiratorysystem) theoretically. The study group underwent clinicalexposure before the post-test while the control group did not.Performance of the students was compared between the twogroups by unpaired Student’s t-test whereas marks of pre and posttestwithin the same group were compared by paired student’s t–test. Everywhere p<0.05 was considered to be significant.Results: The marks of each group in the pre and post-testsdiffered significantly (p<0.05 in each case). Post-test markswere significantly greater in each group though the level ofimprovement was strikingly higher in the study group (p=0.01).Though there was no significant difference in pre-test marks ofboth groups (p=0.73), post-test marks were significantly higher inthe study group (p=0.04). Among the exposed students, majority(92%) opined that ECE was a better technique being practicallyoriented and more interesting while some (8%) found it to bemore time and energy-consuming, suitable for selective portionsof basic science topics.Conclusion: Early clinical exposure may be an effective techniqueto supplement the traditional theoretical teaching and improve theperformance of fresh medical entrants in Physiology. It has betteracceptability by the students and may be considered for inclusionin the existing pre-clinical curriculum with proper allocation oftime and manpower.Keywords: Early clinical exposure; Undergraduate; Curriculum