Abstract
Background: Early clinical exposure (ECE) could enhance students’ learning in the emotional and cognitive domains, socialization with the profession, and the development of professional personality and professionalism. It can also provide a suitable opportunity for future career recognition by creating a more appropriate image of the medical profession. Therefore, the present paper aims to investigate the importance and achievability of ECE goals from the viewpoints of basic sciences medical students and their comparison with their academic performance.
Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 100 medical students were admitted to the hospital after 34 hours of workshop training on professional principles during the first two semesters in 2023-2024. They experienced and practiced their lessons learned in the clinical context. The data collection instrument of the study was the ECE Questionnaire. Its face and content validity were confirmed, and reliability was calculated to be 0.926 through Cronbach’s alpha.
Results: In 93 studied students with a mean age of 21.34±1.363, the mean score of the importance scale of objectives was 99.31±8.59, and the achievability scale was 81.62±13.75, which indicates that despite the high importance of the objectives of the program for students, achieving those objectives is not easy. Also, the educational importance of the objectives of the course and the achievability of the objectives had a significant statistical relationship with the academic performance of students and had no significant statistical relationship with gender and age.
Conclusion: The students held the importance and achievability of the objectives of the ECE program in high regard. More successful students take the importance and achievability of the objectives of the ECE as significantly more important. Despite the high importance of the objectives set out, achieving these objectives is not easy, and this part of the program requires more educational planning and design.