Publication:

Introduction of clinical audit in obstetrics for undergraduate medical students

Background Clinical audit is becoming increasingly important in the healthcare system to ensure a high quality of patient care. Involving the undergraduate medical students in the audit process will help them to understand the subject better and will stimulate them to critically appraise a medical issue. Clinical audit is a hands-on practice of data collection, comparison of current clinical practice with standard and find root cause analysis-based intervention to implement change ideas. Aim and objectives of current study were to introduce audit as a teaching tool in clinical posting of obstetrics and evaluate its impact and acceptability.

Methods Final year MBBS students were enrolled for the study. The caesarean section was selected as the topic for audit. A pre-test was given before the introduction of Clinical audit. Participants were trained to do a systematic clinical audit including analyzing the collected data. They worked in small groups along with a faculty supervisor. A post-test was taken after one month. Likert scale was used to evaluate the acceptability of this tool by students.

Results A total of 50 MBBS students of the final semester completed the pre-test, training to use clinical audit and the post-test. The results of pre-test and post-test were compared and a statistically significant improvement was found in the performance of students. This method was found to be an acceptable tool for clinical teaching by 98% of the students.

Conclusions Final year MBBS Students performed better when clinical audit was used as a teaching tool, which was also well accepted by them.