Assessing Students’ Well-being in Primary Health Care Setting as a Clinical Learning Environment

Abstract

Introduction: Well-being in learning environment requires a culture that actively helps students to achieve their own potential. It requires a learning environment (LE) that supports physical, social and spiritual development. It has been shown that medical students experience high levels of stress that can hinder their performance, professionalism, and overall health. With respect to primary health care (PHC), some studies have shown the relative advantage of PHC centers to provide opportunities for “hands on” practice by pre-clinical students, availability of general practitioners (GPs) to supervise students, and with respect to the scope of PHC, which includes, beside patient care, community health education. Unfortunately, some aspects of the training process in clinical learning environment (CLE) have unfavorable effect on students’ well-being. Medical students face personal distress with negative effect on academic achievement, competency, professionalism, and health. We aimed to measure students wellbeing during their training in primary health care units. Materials and Methods: This is a cross sectional study to assess well-being of undergraduate students in primary health care (PHC) centers affiliated to the Faculty of Medicine, Suez Canal University (FOM-SCU). In addition, to test psychometric prosperities of The MED-NORD (Medical Education in Nordic Countries) questionnaire through exploratory factor analysis (EFA). A comprehensive (purposive) Sample was taken from year 1, 2, and 3. Results: Testing the psychometric prosperities of MED-NORD questionnaire revealed that the questionnaire contained 7 factors and 41 items. The seven factors are: Conceptions of learning and knowledge, Approaches to learning, Perceptions of the learning environment, Problems in studying, Optimism, Reflective learning, and Lack of interest. There were adequate correlations between the factors. Conclusion: The study concluded that the students positively perceived their well-being. Furthermore, Students preferred collaborative knowledge building in learning. However, they use surface approach in their learning more than deep approach. This study also concluded good reliability and construct validity of MED-NORD questionnaire.