The Effect of Training in Primary Health Care Centers on Medical Students’ Clinical Skills

Medical students' effective clinical skills training are an important goal of any medical school. When adequate, graduate doctors will have sufficient skills to consult a patient by taking proper history and conducting appropriate physical examination. The question under scrutiny is the optimal place for providing such training. Since the aim is to graduate general physicians, many literatures highlighted the importance of implementing such training in the primary health care centers. A special clinical skills training program was developed for the Year 4 pre-clerkship medical students of the Arabian Gulf University during the academic year 2011-2012. It was important for these students to acquire certain skills before transferring to the clerkship phase where they deal directly with patients. For the 130 students involved in this study, a self-assessment and clinical exam were conducted at the beginning and end of the program. The study showed that students benefited greatly from this training program with significant differences between their preexisting known skills and clinical skills acquired by the end of the program. Primary care centers are ideal places for optimal training because of small group training setting that is one tutor to two students and of the advantage that students face real patient environment.