The Sources and their Rate of use by Interns for Learning Clinical Skill

Background and purpose: Centers presenting clinical skills training in medical schools improve the students’ ability in practical skills, provide an appropriate setting to practice in an experimental setting and prevent probable mistakes in a real setting. This study is an attempt to determine the interns’ attitudes in Kerman University of Medical Sciences about the amount and the resources of acquiring elementary clinical skills through self-assessment.Method: All interns, who passed the clinical skills course, participated in this cross- sectional study in 2004. A researcher made questionnaire was used to gather the data and t-test and ANOVA were used to analyze them.Results: Most of the respondents believed a separate center as clinical skills center was necessary.Vital signs measurement, NG-tube placement and communicating with patients (18,35,17,76, and 17,3, respectively) got the highest scores in acquiring skills (stagger’s self-assessment) and the lowest scores were for cauterization, intubations and surgical tools identification (9,09, 12,84 and14,11, respectively). The mean of self-assessment score was 76, 7%. The most used resources to acquire skills were clinical skills ward (41%), self-learning (29%) and the professors and others (27%).Conclusion: Since the self-assessment score was low and as the clinical skills center was used the most to acquire skills, improving training in this center and expanding its activities is necessary.