Medical students points of view on clinical skill lab function in 8 month period

Introduction. Considering rights of patients and presence of a need for a standard clinical skills learning setting in recent 3 decades, it seems necessary to encourage decision – makers of medical education to establish clinical skills laboratory, in order to minimize unnecessary practices and possible injuries and reduce stress over students. CLS in TUMS was established in 2001. In planning phase of the Lab, expert opinion and experiences of other universities both in national and international level was regarded. Academic staff and experts collaboratively participated in planning and implementation of educational programs in CLS. Main goal of this study was to assess function of CLS in several dimensions of setting, instruments ,plans and process. Methods. In this descriptive and cross- sectional study a questionnaire was used for determining view points of 83 medical students who participated in CLS programs . SPSS package was used for analysis of data. Result. Findings of the study represented high level of satisfaction rate among students regarding several dimension of CLS function. Satisfaction rate for discipline, education style, interpersonal communication pattern between student and academic staff was 80.2% . Satisfaction rate for consistency between theoretical subjects and practical procedures in educational plans was 78.8%. Considering behavior and negotiation of instructors the satisfaction rate was 83.7%. Satisfaction rate for consistency of contents and needed professional skills at bedside was 67.5% and for instruments was 62.2%. Conclusion. Although CLS is young in TUMS, results show that satisfaction rate among students was high. The same experience could be used in other universities. Therefore, doing the same activities (for planning ) over twice will be prevented.