A STUDY TO EVALUATE MEDICAL UNDERGRADUATES’ PERSPECTIVE ON THE ELECTIVE MODULE: A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the medical undergraduates’ perception of the newly introduced electives by using a questionnaire.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 150 medical undergraduates who were 1^st batch for the electives in a medical college, Belagavi after completion of the third Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of surgery (MBBS) part 1. Approval and clearance were taken from Institutional Ethical Committee prior to the study. The informed consent and the data were collected by using a pre-designed questionnaire via google forms. The data collected was entered in the excel sheet, analysed and expressed in percentage.

Results: The average attendance maintained by the students was around 91%. All students had maintained a log book during electives. Nearly 49% of the students strongly agreed that the faculty were supportive, helpful and reachable to clear their doubts. 61.2% of students felt it was experiential learning, 19.7% felt it was supervised learning and 16.3% termed electives as immersive learning. 39% of students strongly agreed that electives are essential in the undergraduate curriculum.

Conclusion: This study, on the newly introduced module in Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME) curriculum helps to overcome the difficulties experienced by students and to improve the module effectively. Students felt that the implementation was good, but still, it requires more orientation within departments, increased time duration along with a standardized protocol. They also felt that it was more clinically oriented rather than a normal teaching technique, which boosted their interest in the concerned subject.