One year's experience with a clinical skills resource centre

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Abstract
Objectives To describe our experience of teaching clinical skills to first‐year medical students in a new problem‐based curriculum. Design Prospective evaluation of clinical skills acquisition using objective measures. Setting Students were taught in a purpose‐designed clinical skills resource centre in weekly structured sessions. Subjects All 210 first year medical undergraduates in the first year of a new problem‐based and clinically oriented course. Results Student performance in structured objective examinations improved over 1 year. In all but one of nine matched stations, involving history, examination and procedural skills, improvements were significant. Ninety‐three per cent thought that the appropriateness of the skills training course to other course elements was `good' or `very good'. Conclusions First‐year medical students can learn a wide range of clinical skills. Integrated teaching of clinical skills improves satisfaction with undergraduate studies.