Effect of early involvement in clinical practice in improving comprehensive abilities and occupational cognition in medical students / 中华医学教育探索杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the effect of early involvement in clinical practice in improving comprehensive abilities of medical students and strengthening their occupational cognition. Methods The students in the 5-year class of 2014 of pediatrics in our university were enrolled as subjects, among whom 78 students who received early involvement in clinical practice and teaching were enrolled as experimental group and 81 students who did not receive such teaching were enrolled as control group. A questionnaire survey was performed for the students participating in the teaching, including basic information, pre-training quality evaluation, development of personal knowledge and abilities, and comments or suggestions. The two groups were compared in terms of the score of the theoretical course of pediatric surgery, so as to explore whether"early involvement in clinical practice"could improve the theoretical study of students. Finally, the performance of students in clinical practice was evaluated and compared between the two groups to assess the role of "early involvement in clinical practice" in improving comprehensive abilities and occupational cognition. Results More than 90％of the students were satisfied with early involvement in clinical practice and they thought this activity helped them to improve clinical thinking, strengthen occupational cognition, enhance learning interests, improve communication skills, and promote the combination of basic and clinical knowledge. In addition, the follow-up analysis found that compared with the control group, the experimental group had a significantly higher average score [(74.59 ±0.50) vs. (68.89 ±0.67)] and a significantly higher proportion of students with a score of >70, and no students failed. As for the score of clinical practice, the experimental group had significantly better clinical work proficiency, clinical thinking, operational ability,and doctor-patient communication ability than the control group. Conclusion Early involvement in clinical practice among medical students can improve their comprehensive abilities and help to cultivate clinical thinking and doctor-patient communication skills and strengthen their occupational cognition, which lays a good foundation for cultivating high-quality talents through medical education.