Medical Students’ Perceptions about Good Teacher

Abstract

Introduction: A good medical teacher is one who facilitates the growth of students, make significant impact on the lives of students and pave the way in making quality healthcare professional. The objective of this study was to identify the importance of attributes of good teachers from students’ perspectives.

Methods: This descriptive study was conducted in KIST Medical College, Lalitpur, Nepal. The questionnaire containing four attributes of good teacher were distributed among students of third year MBBS of third batch in August 2013. The students endorsed each attribute on 5 Likert’s scale- 1= Extremely important, 2= Very important, 3= Important, 4= to some extent important and 5= Not important. The data was analyzed using IBMS SPSS version 20.

Results: Overall all students gave importance to all four attributes assessed for a good medical teacher in this study (2.83± 0.90, 3.04± 0.92, 3.05±0.84, and 2.95±0.88). Majority of the students perceived that the teacher must explain concepts/ideas (75%), stimulates interest in subject (63%), demonstrate enthusiasm in teaching (73%) and use appropriate teaching technique (70%).

Conclusion: The findings of this study are consistent with the various studies conducted on perceptions of students about attributes of a good medical teachers but cannot be generalized as the data was collected only from third year MBBS students of one medical college of Nepal. It is recommended to conduct study involving all years of medical, dental, nursing and pharmacy students and teachers from randomly selected schools of Nepal, compare the findings and recommend strategy for teaching learning of students and training of teachers.

Keywords: Attributes; good teacher; medical teacher; Nepali students’ perception.