Attitude, Ethics and Communication (AETCOM) modules introduced for MBBS students with the aim of improving their attitude and communication skills while dealing with patients or their relatives with full empathy, good clinical reasoning and compassion¹.  Traditional teaching learning methods like didactic lectures are used for AETCOM modules, does not fulfill the purpose with which this module was introduced for MBBS students. Hence novel methods should be used for teaching, one among them is PAL². It helps the students in acquiring all 3 domains ie cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains. As it helps them to exchange their views about the subject without fear of judgement, hence it in turn increases self-confidence, self-evaluation, healthy competition among peers³. So, if this teaching learning method is used for AETCOM module, it will help the students to improve attitude and communication skills for interacting with colleagues, patients and their relatives.  This will have a long-term impact on students and also will solve the purpose of teaching AETCOM modules for UG learners.  This study was carried out to determine the feasibility of teaching AETCOM modules in Microbiology.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Study design and study population - A prospective study carried out on Phase II MBBS students of Ananta Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Center, Rajsamand.

Sample size- All 150 students were included in the study. They were divided in to 2 groups with 75 students in each group

Study duration - 3 months.

Competencies addressed:

    AETCOM Module –2.4 (Working in a health care team) ⁴           

                                          &

   MI 8.14 (Demonstrate confidentiality pertaining to patient identity in laboratory results)⁵.

Fig 1 -Flow chart showing sequence followed for implementation of PAL on Phase II MBBS students for AETCOM module of Microbiology

The students were  divided in to 2 groups of 75 students each.

In the 1st class -  group 1  students were seated with 3 peer tutors, each peer tutor student were having 25 peer tutees each. The peer tutors took formal/informal sessions for his/her group.

To the group 2 AETCOM Module was  taught in classroom by giving didactic lecture.

Then at the end of the session, they were assessed for the knowledge gained by giving

MCQ’s.

The feedback forms were collected from students and from faculty members.

RESULT

Total 150 students participated in the study. Students and faculties perception was taken with pre validated questionnaire shown in the Graph 1 &2. Majority of the students and faculties responded that PAL is helpful in increasing knowledge about the AETCOM module. This study also highlighted the multidimentional advantages of PAL.

DISCUSSION

In the year 2019, CBME cirriculum was introduced for MBBS students along with this various modules were also included, one among them was AETCOM module which aimed at improving students communication abilities and overall development of students, so that they can show full empathy towards colleagues, patients and their relatives⁶. The teaching learning methods to be used for teaching of these modules should be interactive and bidirectional so that students also actively participate in the teaching learning method which inturn will cause overall development of students⁷.

In this study a total of 150  phase II MBBS students participated, out of which 74 students felt that their present skills have improved after PAL sessions and 72 students had improved understanding of AETCOM modules. 67 students disagreed that PAL is time consuming and tedious. 64 students felt their interpersonnal skills have improved. 68 students felt that over all PAL is a good learning method and is feasible for teaching AETCOM modules of Microbiology. This is similar to the study conducted by Pradip B.Barde et al⁸, in which the students felt that their team making qualities, communication skills and learning about the Physiology AETCOM module has increased.

In the present study 5 out of 7 faculties felt that PAL has increased students knowledge about the subject, also they felt that interpersonnal, communication  and presentation skills of students were improved.  6 faculties felt that team qualities of students were increased also they are of the belief that PAL can be used for teaching other competencies of CBME.This is similar to the study conducted by  Divya et al⁰⁹, in which faculties are in favor of teaching AETCOM module by PAL sessions as it helps in retention of knowledge for a longer time and also helps the students in self directed learning, also they were of the opinion that this should be undersupervision of teachers so that content errors can be avoided while peer tutors are teaching the peer tutees. This was also recommended by Kapoor A et al¹⁰, that AETCOM modules can be taught by PAL sessions.

CONCLUSION

As the likert scale score shows that faculty and students are strongly in favour of PAL as a teaching learning method for AETCOM modules. So PAL can be used as a teaching method for preparing future educators to be a long term learners, good communicators and with improved team making qualities, which in turn will help them in future for better clinical decision making in management of patients. To the best of our knowledge this is the first study of its kind done on II MBBS students of Microbiology for teaching assigned modules of AETCOM under CBME cirriculum, more and more studies on  such novel teaching learning methods should be carried out in future.

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank all the 6 peer tutors- Naveen,Parth,Param,Saurabh,Sneha and Titiksha for active participation in the study and also sincere thanks to all family members for unseen support during this duration.

Author Contributions

Dr Neelima- data collection, data analysis, drafting of manuscript. Dr Shweta – supervision, data analysis and manuscript revision.

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Funding

The authors have no funding to declare.

REFERENCES

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