RESUMEN
INTRODUCTION: The circumstances of the COVID-19 lockdown offered an opportunity to develop remote educational strategies in medical education. OBJECTIVES: To assess medical students' experiences with online e-learning (OeL) satisfaction, intellectual environment, and communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted at the College of Medicine, University of Bisha, Saudi Arabia. A self-administered questionnaire (21 items) was used to evaluate OeL in three domains of satisfaction (nine items), intellectual environment (seven items), and communication (five items). Students from years one to six were invited to fill out the questionnaire form with five-point Likert scale responses. Descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and independent t-test were used to evaluate the association between variables. RESULTS: Out of 237 participants, 96.6% (158 male and 71 female) responded to the questionnaire. Most students (86.5%) preferred the blackboard for their e-learning. The mean total scores were 30.18 ± 6.9 out of 45 for satisfaction, 19.67 ± 5.4 out of 25 for communication 25.43 ± 5.1 out of 35 for the intellectual environment. Over 50% of the students rated moderate scores on satisfaction and intellectual environment domains. About 85% of the students rated moderate scores in the communication domain. Male students rated higher significant scores than female students for satisfaction (31.3 ± 6.3 vs 27.6 ± 7; P < .001) and intellectual environment (26.3 ± 4.32 vs 3.5 ± 6.1; P < .001). There were no significant differences in students' responses to the tested domains related to GPA level. Significantly higher levels of scores for satisfaction (33.3 ± 5.6 vs 28.8 ± 6.9; P < .001) and communication (21.2 ± 4.5 vs 18.9 ± 5.7; P = .019) were obtained by clerkship students than pre-clerkship. CONCLUSIONS: Medical students' experiences with e-learning are encouraging, which might be more effective with continuous training programs for students and tutors. Although OeL is an acceptable methodology, further studies are needed to analyze its impact on the target learning outcomes and students' academic achievement.
RESUMEN
INTRODUCTION: Learning environment might be defined as anything that can affect the learning directly or indirectly. During the era of accreditation and quality assurance, we are badly in need to evaluate our program strength and pick possible areas for curriculum reform. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to investigate the perception of medical students in the University of Bahri (UB) about the educational environment and analyze the variation of this perception with gender, level of study, type of intake, type of certificate, and accommodation. METHODOLOGY: This is a cross-sectional study that was conducted at the Faculty of Medicine, UB, in Sudan during July-August 2017, enrolling 347 students. Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM) questionnaire was used as a survey tool for this study. RESULTS: Overall DREEM average score of 125.2997/200 is perceived. This score is distributed in all DREEM subclasses. CONCLUSION: Having some negative perceptions is a huge burden on policymakers, administration, and all stakeholders to revise the whole educational environment at the UB with special efforts needed for curriculum revision, faculty development, mentoring, and other skills development.
RESUMEN
INTRODUCTION: Pneumonia is common presentation in the emergency room and is still a cause of morbidity and mortality. The rationale of this study was to test the trend of paediatricians to achieve rapid response facing severe pneumonia, the lack of agreed on plan for the management of community acquired pneumonia (CAP) and the few experiences regarding injectable form of ß-lactam antimicrobial. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a prospective case control study, purposive randomized sampling, three patients were excluded since their information was incomplete, 132 patients were randomly divided into groups, one group named control group (penicillin according to the guidelines of WHO 2013), 33 patients; second group treated by ß-lactam inhibitors (Augmentin IV) 50 patients; and third group treated by 3(rd) generation cephalosporin (ceftriaxone) 49 patients. The study was conducted at the main tertiary care and paediatrics teaching hospital in Khartoum capital of Sudan. The study was completed within the duration from 2010 to 2011. RESULTS: Both group showed more or less similar results regarding response, as well as the failure rate however, the Augmentin and ceftriaxone groups showed a little bit better survival than the control group. CONCLUSION: Antibiotics decrease the mortality rate among the pneumonia patients provided that it is given early in the disease.