Ujjwal Bandyopadhyay1, Koushik Ghosh2, Rajdeep Saha3
BACKGROUND
Medical students in India come from diverse cultural, linguistic, economic and
social backgrounds. Further, students from similar backgrounds are often found
to have obtained their school education from different educational boards. Thus,
to ensure a smooth initiation of these diverse population of high school graduates
to the challenging medical science curriculum, a foundation course at the
beginning of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) programme
was considered to be of utmost importance. General guidelines for this ‘Foundation
Course’ were laid down and all institutions were expected to abide by them but
provisions were allowed to institutions to make local changes depending on the
context and requirements. We wanted to analyse the feedback from the students
regarding the foundation course.
METHODS
A pre-validated questionnaire-based, cross-sectional study was carried out among
MBBS students in our institution. The study was conducted in the month of
November 2019 after obtaining the institutional ethics committee clearance.
RESULTS
Most of the students agreed (a total of 86 out of 96 students) with the comment
that the course fulfilled the objectives set out in the foundation course brochure.
52.08 % students agreed and 29.16 % students strongly agreed that the course
satisfied their need and expectations. 88 out of 96 students agreed that there was
opportunity for feedback and evaluation which in turn gives the scope to introduce
formative assessment in the course. This constituted the best part in our learning
experience.
CONCLUSIONS
In general, majority of the students’ feedback on the foundation course was in an
affirmative note. Most of them felt that the course was well structured and
informative enough for them to apply the newly learnt lessons to cope with some
of their real-life problems. Their positive feedback as well as the relevant
suggestions they submitted will obviously contribute towards encouraging the
involved faculties as well as the institute to execute the foundation course in a
more user-friendly and structured manner in the future years to come.
