Perceptions of Medical Students Regarding Learning during Practical Sessions in Pharmacology – A Cross Sectional Questionnaire Based Study

Background: Pharmacology practical exercises compliment the theory classes and are effective tools to develop skills and competencies of a medical graduate. Off-late, the content and nature of pharmacology practicals have witnessed some changes such as inclusion of self-learning modules. These include seminars, clinical case discussions and problem-solving exercises. Insights about the perceptions and preferences of the students help to plan relevant exercises. There is no publication of students’ perception about the usefulness of practicals conducted during the whole course of the second year MBBS. Materials and Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted in 72 students of Karuna Medical College who had completed IInd MBBS course. The students were provided a predesigned proforma to obtain their feedbacks on two aspects of each practicals. One, whether it was interesting and other was a rating of their preferences on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1being least and 5 being excellent. Results: A majority (86.4% – 95.4%) of the students indicated all the practical exercises as interesting. The basic pharmacology exercises and group assignments were considered as interesting by 95.40% and 94.80% of students respectively. They also had marked their preference to group assignments as excellent (59.03%) and good (26.39%) indicating group assignments as the most preferred practical assignments. This was followed next by a preference for case discussions and seminars (24.30% excellent, 47.22% good) and then basic pharmacology exercises (24.07% excellent, 42.59% good). Conclusion: The structured feedbacks from students regarding pharmacology practical exercises provide valuable insights in planning interesting sessions for future.