Paediatric clinical teaching: comparison of two medical schools

Abstract

Clinical paediatric teaching in undergraduate medical education is important to impart essential skills
in communicating, diagnosing and formulating management plans for common childhood illness of the country so as to reduce existing high mortality and morbidity rates. Private medical colleges are facing challenges in paediatric teaching because of the unavailability of paediatric patients with different clinical signs; both the inpatient and outpatient paediatric attendance at their teaching
hospitals is very discouraging at present. At the same time, they are plagued with inadequate
investigative facilities. We conducted a study to evaluate some of the clinical skills in the students during their final examination. The study showed marked differences among students in some of the
essential neonatal skills and other common paediatric problems. Statistically significant differences were found in the majority OSCE stations. The mean wrong answers in one medical school were 42.2% (Std D. 30.1 %) and the other school was 24.9% (Std. D 18.3 %). In one medical school the mean of signs that were rightly performed for the essential neonatal examination were 1.4% (Std. Dev. 1.1 %) and in other schools it was 10.4% (Std. Dev 6.1%). This shows that it is necessary to standardize
pediatric teaching in the country’s medical schools.