The Effect of Teaching Professionalism by Using Real Lifetime Scenarios in Undergraduate Medical Students: An Educational Trial

Abstract

Introduction: The objective of this research is to evaluate the effect of teaching professionalism by real lifetime scenario to undergraduate MBBS medical students.

Methods: This comparative quasi-experimental trial was conducted in OBS/GYN department from May 2019 to Jan 2020. The final year MBBS students of Shalamar Medical and Dental College, Lahore, who attended the clinical rotation of Gynae OBS were enrolled in the study using consecutive sampling. Each batch consists of 15 students. The first two batches were taken as active control, whereas the third batch was taken as an interventional group. The certified faculty in medical education assessed professionalism by using P-MEX at the start and end of the rotation in the gynae ward. P-MEX data are presented as mean and standard deviation. The comparison between the two groups was done using independent sample t-test, and pre- and post-comparison within group was done by paired sample t-test. P-value less than 0.05 was considered as significant.

Results: Among the 45 students, 28(62.22%) were male and 17(37.78%) were female. Age and gender were statistically similar in both groups. The average total score, at the start of the rotation of the intervention group was 1.95±0.294, whereas the active control group was 2.23±0.31. At the end of the rotation, the average total score of the intervention group was 3.22±0.48 and active control was 2.56±0.53. Pre- and post P-MEX score was statistically significant with P<0.001.

Conclusion: This research showed that the teaching of professionalism using real lifetime scenarios led to statistically significant improvement of professionalism in the form of P-MEX mean score among final MBBS students.

Keywords: Medical students; Professionalism; Teaching.

Figure 1

Group-wise comparison of different domains of P-MEX at the start and end of the rotation