EVALUATING THE EDUCATIONAL GAINS OF THE 6TH YEAR MEDICAL STUDENTS ON INJECTION AND SURGICAL SUTURE PRACTICES

Objective: the objective of this study is to evaluate the experiences gained by the 6th year students of istanbul faculty of medicine on injection and surgical suture practices and to determine problems faced by students during the stages of these practices. material and method: 283 istanbul faculty of medicine 6th year students were participated in this descriptive study between november 16, 2012 and may 20, 2013. students were subjected to the “experiences on the practices of injection and surgical suture” feed-back form that contained 18 skills. in the feed-back form the students were asked 8 open ended questions about whether they had enough time for their practices, the practices that they self-evaluated themselves as competent or incompetent, the reasons for their incompetency and their suggestions for a better training. findings: a total of 283 feed-back forms were returned and evaluated. the percentage of students doing the procedures at least once were: 89.6 % for venous blood drawing; 71.6 % for surgical suture and ligature; 71.6 % for im drug administration, 69.4 % for dressing angiocut puncture; 68.1 % serum administration, 66.1 % iv cannula setting; 64.6 % preparation of an im drug; 62.9 % preparation of an iv drug; 60.2 % iv drug administration, and 57.1 % for preparation of serum solution. 36.1 % of the students reported that they felt confident for all their practices. the students suggested that there should be bedside training, more and mandatory clinical practices and the duties, authorization and responsibilities of interns must be well defined in order to get better skills training conclusion: the students reported that they could not find enough practice opportunities in clinical fields and they felt incompetent for most of their practices during their training session. physician candidates need to have a more broad and sequenced curriculum in terms of clinical skills. structured skill stations with technical infrastructure and trainers should be established. the number of skills trainers and the number of training phantoms and training sessions should be increased