Objective To determine medical students' self awareness and ability to discriminate right from left; to identify characteristics associated with this ability; and to identify any techniques used to aid discrimination. Design Questionnaire and psychometric study. Setting Undergraduate medical school, Northern Ireland. Participants 290 first year undergraduate students. Main outcome measure Medical students' ability to discriminate right from left using the Bergen right-left discrimination test. Results Test scores ranged from 31 to 143 on a scale of 0-144 (mean 112 (standard deviation 22.2)). Male students significantly outperformed female students (117.18 (26.96) v 110.80 (28.94)). Students who wanted to be surgeons performed significantly better than those who wanted to be general practitioners or medical doctors (119.87 (25.15) v 110.55 (27.36) v 112.50 (26.88)). The interaction effect for sex and career wishes was not significant (P=0.370). Students who used learnt techniques to help them discriminate scored significantly less than those who did not (P<0.001). Students had greater difficulty in discriminating right from left when looking at the forward view rather than the back view (P<0.001). Conclusions Male students were better than female students at distinguishing right from left, and aspiring surgeons were better than aspiring general practitioners or medical doctors. Students had more difficulty with the forward view than the back view.The ability to discriminate right from left calls on several higher functions including memory, visuospatial processing, language, integration of sensory information, and sometimes mental rotation.1 Some people have difficulty in distinguishing right from left in themselves and in others.2 3 Correctly discriminating right from left is important in the practice of medicine. Confusing a patient's right side from their left can result in surgery, procedures, and investigations being carried out on the wrong side.4 Such mistakes may occur more frequently than is reported, 4 and prevention should start at undergraduate level. 5Medical students perform better than psychology or law students in right-left discrimination tests, but data are limited. 6 We aimed to assess medical students' perceived and actual right-left discriminatory ability; to identify characteristics associated with this ability; and to identify any techniques used to aid discrimination. METHODSWe invited all first year students at the School of Medicine, Queen's University Belfast who attended a clinical skills programme to participate. Consenting students completed an anonymised questionnaire to ascertain their sex, age, and career wishes. We used the Oldfield handedness inventory to determine hand preference.7 Students recorded their perceived discriminatory ability on a five point Likert scale. We also asked them to record any techniques that they used to aid discrimination.We used the Bergen right-left discrimination test to measure participants' ability to discriminate right from left. 8 In thi...
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