Iranian Journal of Medical Education

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Introduction: Being competent in performing clinical skills is necessary in medical profession. Acquiring essential competencies requires for time, patience, and practice in an appropriate context. Logbook is an instructional notebook in which there is a list of skills students must learn. These skills have been organized according to the opinion of faculty members of each ward and the international objectives set by ministry. The educational process could be evaluated continuously by means of these logbooks. This study was performed to evaluate the effect of using log books on clinical skills learning in cardiology ward. Methods: This quasi-experimental study was performed on 60 clerkship and internship students of cardiology ward in 2007-2008. In the first phase, students entering cardiology ward were selected as the control group. They received the usual instructions on clinical skills of the ward. In the second phase, logbooks were distributed among the next group of students as the experiment group and necessary explanations were provided for them. Students were asked to fill the required parts in the logbook and confirm them by their teacher. The educational content for both groups was the same. At the end of the course, students of each group were evaluated by their teachers using checklists for every single competency. Scores achieved for each competency were added up separately. The Mean scores of competencies achieved by students of both groups were compared using t-test. Results: The mean scores of all competencies achieved by the experiment group were significantly higher compared to those of the control group (α<0.05). In addition to comparing mean scores, total scores of competencies of clerks and interns in both groups were summed up and ranked qualitatively. So, the control group was ranked as average and the experiment group as good. Conclusion: Identifying educational objectives and providing guidelines through logbook could be an effective model for directing students towards clinical goals and improving the quality of education.

Keywords: Clinical teaching, Cardiology ward, Clerkship student, Intern, Logbook

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