Introduction: The traditional teaching-learning process should reform to improve the academic performance and understanding of the students. This study aimed to determine the perceptions of second-year medical students towards early clinical exposure about their approach to educating pregnant women on the physiology of pregnancy.
Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study with a mixed-method design comprising both quantitative and qualitative components among second-year medical students of a medical college in Nepal from September 2019 to September 2020. After ethical approval from the Institutional Review Committee (Reference number: 207), 40 students included through the convenience sampling method. These students were subjected to early clinical exposure in the form of educating pregnant women on physiological changes during pregnancy. Data was entered and analyzed using Microsoft Excel 2016. Point estimate at 95% Confidence Interval was calculated along with frequency and proportion for binary data.
Results: Among 34 responses, majority of the students 29 (85.28%) (73.36-97.20 at 95% Confidence Interval) were motivated to learn the physiology of pregnancy after the activity; 15 (44.11%) strongly agreed and 14 (41.17%) agreed to this statement. Thirty-two students (94.11%) claimed that the activity improved their understanding of the physiology of pregnancy. The majority of the students expressed that this approach is pragmatic which ignited more curiosity regarding the subject matter.
Conclusions: The majority of the students had satisfactory perceptions regarding their early clinical exposure which was similar to standard data and they expressed that they would like to have similar activities in the future.
Keywords: academic performance; early clinical exposure; perception; physiology of pregnancy..