Evaluation of basic medical sciences knowledge retention among medical students

Introduction: Recall and understanding of basic science knowledge is considered background for studying the clinical sciences but does not directly affect clinical knowledge. Our aim was to evaluate the basic medical sciences recall and explore the association between the knowledge of basic and clinical sciences concepts. Methods: The current descriptive study was conducted during the academic year 2009-10. It included 183 medical students (48.6% male, 51.4% female) from among 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th year students of Taibah University College of Medicine in AL-Madinah AL-Munawarah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Response rate was 73%. We administered an anonymous knowledge test with 15 basic and clinical pairs of questions. Results: There was a statistical significant overall effect of the study year when the second basic year students score compared with the clinical year's scores for basic questions (6.4 ±1.9 and 5.68 ±1.7, F = 12.51, p<0.001) and for clinical questions (4.0 ± 2.5 and 4.5 ± 1.8, F = 14.73, p<0.001) respectively. Conclusions: We would recommend modification of basic knowledge education to correlate with clinical training such that the student would be able to assimilate concepts of disease at an integrative level.

Publication History

Received: 12 October 2010

Accepted: 01 November 2010

Article published online:
23 May 2022