APPROACH OF MEDICAL STUDENTS TO PHYSIOLOGY: A FEEDBACK STUDY FROM TWO MEDICAL SCHOOLS IN A SUB-HIMALAYAN STATE OF INDIA

Sabita Yograj; Anjali Nadir Bhat; Geetika Gupta; Leela Kalsotra; Rajiv Kumar Gupta; Arun Arora

Volume : VII, Issue : IV, April - 2018

APPROACH OF MEDICAL STUDENTS TO PHYSIOLOGY: A FEEDBACK STUDY FROM TWO MEDICAL SCHOOLS IN A SUB-HIMALAYAN STATE OF INDIA

Sabita Yograj, Anjali Nadir Bhat, Geetika Gupta, Leela Kalsotra, Rajiv Kumar Gupta, Arun Arora

Abstract :

Demands of best health care necessitates the revamping of the medical curriculum including Physiology which is the core of medical teaching in first profession MBBS. Students� feedback regarding the learning methodology, difficulties towards learning Physiology and their opinion regarding the improvement in teaching remains the cornerstone of this revamp. The information so gathered might help the medical fraternity in mapping the Physiology curriculum in a way to make it more informative and interesting for the medical students.A pre–tested Questionnaire prepared by the authors was used to seek the information from medical students regarding various parameters of learning and their difficulties while learning Physiology and also their opinion regarding the improvement in subject teaching of Physiology. It was administered to one thousand MBBS students, five hundred each from ASCOMS & Hospital, Sidhra, Jammu and Govt. Medical College (GMC), Jammu (J&K). Data thus collected was analysed and Chi–square test was used as test of significance. Approximately, 80% of students each from both the colleges were affirmative of importance of lectures and practicals also and about 60% each voted that the lecture notes were useful. Higher proportion of ASCOMS students reported tutorials as tool in subject learning (p<0.05).More than 80% students of either colleges emphasised the need of reference books in case of difficulty while very few students interacted with their class fellows, seniors and teachers. Lower proportion of GMC students used previous physiology exam papers for help (p<0.05).About 40%, 30% and 20% of the students from each medical college were in favour of the use of overhead projector(OHP), power point presentation (PPT) and chalk and blackboard respectively while teaching. Students of either colleges underlined the importance of clinical problems in understanding physiology and laid stress on its use more often along with integrated teaching (p>0.05).Students underscored the importance of lectures, tutorials and practicals in physiology learning while clinical problems were elicited to be highly useful. Students also opined in favour of integrated teaching. Authors emphasise the use of hyid methods like OHP, PPT and chalk and blackboard while teaching with addition of interactive teaching sessions like Group discussions and problem based learning along with

integrated teaching. Further, teacher student relationship needs to be more open, encouraging and friendlier.