Junaid S Khan, Saima Tabasum, Usman K Yousafzai, Osama Mukhtar.
Measuring the medical education environment in undergraduate medical colleges across Punjab, Pakistan.
Biomedica Jan ;27(1):14-8.

Introduction: The University of Health Sciences (UHS) is responsible for regulating medical education in all affiliated Private and Public medical colleges in Punjab Province. Measuring the education environment in these institutions will be the initial step in understanding the factors affecting it. Materials and Methods: In this cross sectional study, the Population was limited to all the students of the Final Year Baccalaureate of Medicine; Baccalaureate of Surgery in Medical Colleges affiliated with UHS in 2008. DREEM questionnaire was collected anonymously from the students. The given data was analysed using parametric tests in Statistical Package for Social Sciences v.16. Significance was taken at p < 0.05. Results: The response rate was 84.14%. The overall average age was 23.5 years with comparable male, female age (23.9 and 23.2 respectively). The Mean Score of DREEM in the private sector – (M = 137, SD = 21.25) is statistically significantly higher (t = 9.93, df = 410.38, 2 – tailed p @ 0.00) than in the public sector (M = 115, SD = 23.76). Analysis of variance found a statistically significant difference between the various schools (F = 44.23, p @ 0.00). A two-way between – groups analysis of variance showed a statistically significant main effect for age group (F = 11.17, p @ 0.00). The main effect for gender (F = 0.757, p = 0.385) and the interaction effect (F = 0.78, p = 0.925) were not statistically significant. The Tukey hsd test found that students in age Group ‘23 years and below’ scored statistically significantly lower (121) and students in age Group ’26 years and above’ scored statistically significantly higher (137) on DREEM than the rest of the students. Conclusion: Factors influencing struggling environments need to be identified. Females found environment comparatively less satisfactory is a worrying trend and needs to be addressed.

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