The Effect of Early Clinical Exposure Program on Attitude Change of Undergraduate Medical Students toward their preparation for At-tending Clinical Setting in Internal Medicine, Surgery and Pediatrics Wards during 2013-2014

Introduction & This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of early clinical exposure on medical students’ attitude toward their preparation for attending clinical setting. In an interventional before -after study, 52 fourth semester medical students studying at Hamadan University of medical sciences were enrolled in the study. The participants filled out a self-structured questionnaire before and after taking part in a 4 month course in three different wards including: surgery, pediatric and internal wards. The staff’s opinions about the program were also gathered. Mean attitude score increased significantly after taking part in the course in these areas: satisfaction about basic science lessons (P=0.019), understanding social determinants of health (P= 0.03) and understanding clinical thinking and simple clinical skills (P= 0.01). Passing the course did not have any significant effect in communication skills and current semester scores (P.0.05 in both issues). Forty one percent of the academic staff in the mentioned wards believed in the necessity of early clinical exposure in basic science stage, 29.5% denied it's necessity and 29.5% did not express their opinions. It seems that despite the mean score increase of some items, early clinical exposure program doesn’t have any positive effect on the measured items. Therefore, it is recommended to change the medical education program.