Perception of educational ambiance among undergraduate medical students at Geetanjali Medical College, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India

Abstract

Background: The quality of education provided by any institution depends on many factors and perception of all the stakeholders involved in it. The students are the most important stake holders and their perception means a lot in shaping and refining the standards of medical education. There are many tools to find out the students perception about the educational ambience and DREEM's questionnaire is one such tool, which is valid and reliable. It has been used by many institutes in India and abroad to find the students perception but its use in this region was not reported. Methods: The students of first and second MBBS were divided into groups FY and SY, using the validated DREEM questionnaire. The data obtained from the two groups was analysed using Levene's test of variance in SPSS version 16. A p-value less than 0.05 were considered significant. Results: The students from both the batches participated in study with n=130 and 64 in group FY and SY respectively. Group FY feels significantly (p=0.08) more positive about educational environment as compared to group SY with total score 118.39 and 112. 46 out of 200 respectively, for group FY and SY. Both groups are highly positive about their perception of learning and academic self-perception whereas they are not satisfied with their social self-perception. Conclusions: The study concludes that the first MBBS students have better perception of educational environment as compared to second MBBS and the unsatisfactory social self-perception could hint towards much needed curricular reform for holistic development of our young professional.