Three Years Experience of Third Year Undergraduate Medical Students in Different Teaching Learning Methods: A Qualitative Study

Introduction: India is a second largest populous country producing more than sixty thousand doctors every year. Still in India research on teaching learning methods are subtle. To improve the quality of knowledge and skills of medical students, there is a need to analyse the existing teaching learning methods as well as innovating new methods. Aim: To compare the three years experience of third year MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) students in three different teaching learning methods (Tutorials, Integrated Teaching sessions and Routine Lectures). Materials and Methods: Qualitative study was carried out among 60 third year MBBS students in medical college in south India. A semi-structured questionnaire was developed, with the help of literature review and is distributed among 66 students. Six participants excluded due to incomplete information. Questionnaire consisted of totally 16 questions. For the first ten questions answers were captured in Likert scale of one to five (one-poor; five- excellent). Eleventh to sixteenth questions were asked as an open-ended question to mention some positive and negative things about each method. Questions with Likert scale were analysed using Kruskal Wallis H Test and the open ended questions were analysed by thematic analysis. Results: Overall mean rank for Tutorial was 129.03 followed by Integrated Teaching (mean rank 86.33) and Routine Lecture (mean rank 56.14). Students gave better scores for Tutorials in areas such as easily understandable, better attention span and students involvement in the session. Students gave better scoring for Integrated Teaching in areas such as well organized, integration with other departments, ideal usage of audio visual aids and providing detailed information to the students. Drawbacks of Integrated Teaching were failure to attract the students, prolonged sessions (long duration), boring and minimal involvement of students. Lecture classes on the other hand purely depend upon the ability of the faculty. Conclusion: In three years of students experience, when comparing to Routine Lecture and Integrated Teaching, Tutorial was considered as the best teaching learning method by students because of involvement of students, easily understandable, focussed and increased student teachers interaction.