The Barriers to Improve Medical Students Learning of Clinical Skills

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was   to identify barriers in learning of clinical skills at   College of Medicine (COM-J), King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS), Jeddah.

Study Design: Analytical cross-sectional study

Place and Duration of Study: This study was conducted at the College of Medicine (COM) (KSAU-HS), from August 2021 till Jan 2022

Materials and Methods: This study utilized a self-administered survey questionnaire developed by the authors based on the review of literatures and consensus from experts in the field of clinical teaching. After validation, the Questionnaire was distributed online via using Microsoft forms.  A total of 806 students were included, convenience sampling technique was used.  With a confidence interval of 95% and 5% margin of error, sample size of 206 was calculated by https://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

Results: In this study, we collected 210 responses from medical students at COM-J, KSAU-HS, Jeddah. The mean age among the participants was 22.3, while (N= 125, 59.5 %) of the students were male. We could recognize that the main barriers against improving of the medical students’ learning of clinical skills were; time constraints or pressure the students (N=158, 75.2 %), difference and inconsistency between theoretical and practical training (N= 103, 49 %), poor understanding of the   theoretical part before practical training (N= 100, 47.6 %), poor resource management (N=92, 43.8 %), and poor instructor teaching technique (N= 92, 43.8 %).

Conclusion: The main barriers to learning clinical skills were diverse and included time constraints or pressure, difference and inconsistency between theoretical and practical training, poor understanding of the students to theoretical part before practical training, poor resource management, and poor instructor teaching technique.