Role Of Early Clinical Exposure in First Year Medical Education When Combined with Conventional Didactic Teaching.

Introduction: As per the Competency Based medical education, “early clinical exposure” (ECE) is included to increase the understanding and concept building in the first phase of Medical Education. ECE does not replace the basic sciences and conventional teaching but enriches and contextualizes that learning. Aims: To assess the importance of early Clinical Exposure in the first MBBS medical training when done along with he didactic lectures. Methodology: Didactic lecture on a topic in Electrocardiogram (ECG) was taken followed by Early Clinical Exposure (ECE) for the same topic was conducted in the hospital setting on real patients was conducted. Institutional Ethical Committee approval was taken, and students were included in study after duly signing the consent letter. Results: The students returned a filled questionnaire after didactic lecture and the same students after an added session of Early Clinical Exposure. The students here acted as their own control. Paired t test and Wilcoxin test were done, which found the results to be highly significant (p<0.001). Conclusion: ECE was perceived as very satisfactory by the students, and it helped in improvement of building concept, clarity in the usefulness of classroom and theoretical teaching. In the long run this will also spike their interest in the subject. Early clinical exposure might prove to be instrumental in bridging the gap between the theory and practice from the beginning of the medical education, if executed properly.