One year's experience with a clinical skills resource centre

Abstract

Objectives: To describe our experience of teaching clinical skills to first-year medical students in a new problem-based curriculum.

Design: Prospective evaluation of clinical skills acquisition using objective measures.

Setting: Students were taught in a purpose-designed clinical skills resource centre in weekly structured sessions.

Subjects: All 210 first year medical undergraduates in the first year of a new problem-based and clinically oriented course.

Results: Student performance in structured objective examinations improved over 1 year. In all but one of nine matched stations, involving history, examination and procedural skills, improvements were significant. Ninety-three per cent thought that the appropriateness of the skills training course to other course elements was 'good' or 'very good'.

Conclusions: First-year medical students can learn a wide range of clinical skills. Integrated teaching of clinical skills improves satisfaction with undergraduate studies.