UNDERGRADUATE MEDICAL STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS AND OPINIONS TOWARDS INTRODUCTION TO CLINICAL MEDICINE

Background: Introduction to Clinical Medicine (ICM) is a relatively new and innovative approach for teaching medicine. ICM engages medical students in their understanding of the disease process from clinical feature to diagnosis, studying abnormalities of complaints, examination. The aim of this study was to find the undergraduate medical students’ perceptions and opinions towards Introduction towards Clinical Medicine. Methods: An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted among MBBS students using non-probability sampling technique from 22nd June 2022 to 15th October 2022. Ethical approval was taken from institutional review committee of College of Medical Sciences. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistical tools in SPSS-20. P-value <0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: This study was carried out among 220 medical students. The mean and standard deviation of age of students was found to be 22.50±1.89 years. The ratio of gender of students was almost equal. The positive level of perception was found to be 43.6% with 95% CI 37.04% to 50.15%. More than 99% student’s choice was to read clinical medicine. None of the variables was found to be statistically significant with the level of perception. Conclusions: Most of the students are strongly agree with the relevance and significance of this subject introducing in MBBS level. Very minimum percentage students had making future plan to read basic science subject while more than half of the students had future plan to choose ICM as a carrier subject.