Journal of Contemporary Medical Education DOI: 10.5455/jcme.20151125021314 www.scopemed.org J Contemp Med Edu ● 2015 ● Vol 3 ● Issue 4 165 Students’ Attitude and Perception towards Basic Sciences in a Medical School of Nepal: A Cross-sectional Study Dev Kumar Shah 1 , Rajesh Kumar Jha 2 , Ajit Kumar Sah 2 , Ajit Kumar Sah 2 , Phoolgen Sah 2 , Keshab Poudel Prasad Poudel 2 , Govinda Prasad Dhungana 3 ABSTRACT Background: The learning process of medical students is influenced by their attitude and perception towards different subjects. In conventional curriculum, basic medical sciences generally provide basement for students to construct the mansion of clinical knowledge and skills. Objective: We aimed to assess the first and second year medical students’ attitudes and perception towards the learning of basic sciences. Materials and methods: The questionnaire (nine items) designed by West and coworkers was distributed among 240 students and they were asked to denote their opinions using a five-point Likert scale, which ranges from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. First five items measured the perceived importance and relevance of basic sciences to clinical medicine, and last four items measured the students’ attitudes toward, and perceived effectiveness of their education in basic sciences. The median score of statements were compared between subgroups of respondents using Mann-Whitney and Chi-square tests, wherever applicable. Results: Mean age of students was 19.8± 1.2 years; 58.2% and 41.8% were male and female respectively. Most of the respondents though disagreed with first statement and were neutral for second statement, agreed with all the remaining statements. The median scores were 12 and 9 for combination of first five statements and last four statements respectively. Significant level (p=0.003) of disagreement was shown by scholarship students than self-financed on the effectiveness of their education in basic sciences. Students’ curiosity through teaching of basic sciences was found to be significantly decreased (p=0.035) in second year students. Conclusion: Students acknowledged the importance and relevance of basic sciences to clinical medicine and showed overall positive attitude toward, and perceived effectiveness of their education in basic sciences. KEY WORDS: Clinical; Curriculum; Effectiveness; Opinion; Relevance Original Research INTRODUCTION Students’ attitude and perception play a vital role in their learning process. Basic sciences and clinical sciences are the two main part of the medical curriculum in Nepal. In Nepal, lecture-based, teacher-centered, discipline-based, examination-driven, and hospital-oriented teaching pattern is followed. The Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) degree is a four and half year program, which is followed by one year compulsory rotating internship in medical schools of Nepal. Community medicine and Basic science subjects (anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, microbiology, pathology and pharmacology) are covered in an integrated manner during the first two years. Community medicine continues as a part of curriculum till the final year and the clinical subjects like medicine, surgery, pediatrics, orthopedics etc. are covered during the last two and half years of the course [1]. After completion of five and half years of undergraduate course, they have to qualify Nepal medical council’s licensing examination. Once they pass it they become eligible to practice medicine and appear for post graduate entrance examinations. The other side of scenario is that a good number of questions from basic sciences are asked in the most of licensing and post graduate entrance examinations. Generally, medical students in conventional programs use previously learned basic sciences concepts to build their clinical knowledge. It has been observed that basic science knowledge learned in a clinical context is better comprehended and more easily applied by the students [2- 4]. The previous studies done in a medical school of Nepal and India have found overall positive opinion towards the basic sciences among medical students [5,6]. In contrary other studies carried in the Netherland and Saudi Arabia have found that students became increasingly negative in their opinions about basic science courses as they progressed through their medical education [2,7]. An integrated approach of teaching is followed in our institution. However different subjects of basic sciences are taught separately to prepare the students for assessments and unfortunately the process of integrating all the subjects of basic science and clinical subjects do not come about as expected. Therefore, the students neither can relate the different disciplines of basic sciences to each other nor with medical practice in future. Little is known about the attitudes and perception of Nepalese medical students toward basic sciences. Monitoring the attitudes and perception of medical students throughout their course may be relevant to provide guidelines to the educational planners for better integration of basic sciences with clinical subjects so that students can apply their knowledge unanimously to explain the clinical conditions. Therefore, this study was planned with the objective of assessing the students’ attitudes and perception toward 1 Department of Physiology, Chitwan Medical College, Bharatpur, Nepal. 2 Department of Pharmacology, Chitwan Medical College, Bharatpur, Nepal. 3 Department of Community Medicine, Chitwan Medical College, Bharatpur, Nepal. Address for correspondence: Dev Kumar Shah, Department of Physiology, Chitwan Medical College, Bharatpur, Nepal. devshahdr@yahoo.com Received: September 13, 2015 Accepted: November 11, 2015 Published: November 26, 2015