Survey of Clinical Competency in Fourth-year Medical Students of Guilan University of Medical Sciences in 2011:A Short Report

Evaluation of clinical competency of medical students can give very useful information to the authorities for setting educational aims according to student’s requirements and qualitative promotion in the educational process. The present study has been evaluated the clinical competency of fourth-year medical students. This cross-sectional study has been done in 2011 to assess clinical competence of all the fourth-year students of Guilan University of Medical Sciences, that all of them had passed the skills lab course. Data-gathering tool was a questionnaire which assessed nine main competencies in medical students. All data was analyzed by Chi-square and analysis variances by SPSS software. 68 students enrolled in the study with the mean age of 24-year old. In the field of effective communication, 78% of students scored excellent. In the clinical skills, applying sciences as guidelines in diagnosis and management of patients, lifetime learning, self-awareness, socio-medical affairs and understanding the role of a professional physician fields, result in 84% of the students were average.Most of students had low scores only in the field of ethical understanding and judgement. There was no significant relation in the clinical competency of the different fields according to the age and sex. Generally, the students in our study reached a reasonable level of competence in participating in clinical treatment.