Students Perception of Educational Environment During Paraclinical Training in a Government Medical College in North-East India - A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

BACKGROUND A warm, optimally supportive, challenging, and competitive environment is widely regarded as an essential pre-requisite for best possible learning. Students’ satisfaction on educational environment influences their learning approach and outcome. The Dundee ready educational environment measure (DREEM) is a globally accepted valid tool to assess educational environment during undergraduate medical education, in which students are scored for 50 items with a total global score of 200. This study was undertaken, as there had been paucity of relevant data from north-east India, with the aim of assessing students’ perception of their educational environment in paraclinical training during second professional MBBS course. METHODS This was a cross-sectional survey-based study conducted during the months of September and October, 2017 involving 168 second professional MBBS-students of third and fifth semesters of Government Medical College of north-east India. DREEM questionnaire was used to assess the educational environment, as perceived by the students, during paraclinical training. RESULTS This study showed that the mean global score involving all the domains was 119.58 ± 46.95, suggesting a ‘more positive than negative’ educational environment prevailing in the institute during paraclinical training. The individual domain scores for their - perception of learning was 29.90 ± 5.32, perception of teachers was 27.68 ± 4.13, academic self-perception was 18.96 ± 3.78, perception of atmosphere was 26.93 ± 6.40 and social self-perception was 16.11 ± 3.34, suggesting that the training was moving in right direction across all the domains of educational environment, though was not optimally perfect. CONCLUSIONS The present study revealed a suboptimal perception of undergraduate medical students in all the domains of educational environment in paraclinical phase. The overall educational environment during paraclinical teaching moving in a satisfactory direction though was not excellent. Social perspectives of the educational environment need to be further improved. KEYWORDS Educational Environment, DREEM Inventory, Paraclinical Training, Students’ Perception, Global Score