Importance of Clinical Skills Center in Promoting Clinical Teaching and Improving Performance of Libyan Medical Students

Abstract

The establishment of a clinical skill center (CSC) is important, because it help in improving and maintaining
clinical and communication skills, and to ensure that all students have the necessary learning opportunities and
appropriate assessment before approaching real patients.
To evaluate the clinical skill center at Faculty of Medicine from student’ perspective.
A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted at CSC in faculty of medicine during period of 3 months from
April to June 2017, included 400 medical students who were finished all skills, and asked to complete an evaluation
sheet and rate their agreement with a series of 10 questions, and one open ended question. Data analysis was done
by SPSS program version 19.
There were 318 (79.5%) of students who felt that CSC helped them to learn theoretical knowledge and apply it in
a clinical setting. A total of 320 (80%) of students thought the skills sessions were mostly valuable, and excellent
additional; 337 (84%) of student preferred to spend time learning in the lab and 259 students (64.5%) felt there were
enough doctors. Half of class felt that there were too many students in the session, and 271 (67.5%) felt that time
of the session was enough. The majority of students 341 (85.5%) felt there were CSC helped them to gain skills and
feel as a doctor and 363 (91%) students agree with early introduction of CSC and highly recommended it.
Introduce clinical skills center as a new innovative method to provide comprehensive clinical skills training to assist
medical students and not to replace traditional bedside teaching in hospital was well-perceived by students.