Abstract
Backgrounds: Care experience course was set up in 1987 and has been regarded as an effective curriculum for the first-year medical students. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether medical students change their ways of thinking of the care for the elderly and the disabled before and after the course.
Method: Subjects were 90 first-year medical students. Before and after care experience course, the subjects were asked to fill in a11-item questionnaire with 4 response categories. Wilcoxon’s signed rank test was used to evaluate whether the students change their ways of thinking of the care before and after the course. P value of less than 0.05 was considered significant.
Result: In comparison with the item scores before the course, most of the item scores showed significantly higher values after the course, particularly for those who had never visited nursing care institutions.
While those who had visited nursing care institutions were likely to have higher scores for the importance of experiencing activities of daily living(ADL)assistance, those who had never visited tended to show higher scores for the importance of having opportunity to think of their future as a medical doctor and of experiencing some specific techniques as performed in nursing care institutions.
Conclusions: Care experience course may provide opportunities to think of the significance of nursing care, particularly ADL assistance, and think of their future as a medical doctor.
