Effects of Mastery Learning Model on Clinical Competencies in the Operating Room Students

Mastery learning model is one of the new models of teaching which is considered for clinical competence. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of mastery learning model on clinical competencies of operating room students.
In this educational trial study, 60 operating room students who had inclusion criteria were chosen through simple random sampling and were divided into two control and experimental groups. Training for the experimental and control groups was the mastery learning and routine methods respectively during one academic semester. Clinical competency questionnaire was completed by the subjects before and after the intervention. Data were analyzed using statistical tests of Chi-square and Paired t test.
In the experimental group, the mean scores of clinical competence before- and after-intervention were (38.23±2.59) and (46.84±1.91) respectively with a significant difference (p=0.04), while these values had no significant differences in the control group before (38.69±2.54) and after (42.59±2.39) intervention (p=0.3). There were significant differences in the mean of total clinical competency and its dimensions in the two groups(p≤0.05), but these two groups did not show any significant differences in termas of the leadership dimension at the beginning and the end of the study (p=0.2).
Mastery learning model could possibly enhance operating room student's clinical competence. So, using of this model in the operating room student's education is recommended.