Preclinical Knowledge Retention by MBBS Students during Their Clinical Years: An Observational Study to Analyze Preparedness towards National Exit Test

Aim and background: One of the challenges to be faced by MBBS students completing their final year henceforth is to face the national exit test (NeXT) to be eligible to practice and start postgraduate studies.The objectives were to compare the retention capacity of phase I subjects in phase II, phase III part 1 and 2 MBBS, and to analyze the difficulty index, discrimination index of multiple choice questions (MCQs) amongst the students of each phase.Materials and methods: The study was conducted in the Medical Education unit of East Point College of Medical Sciences & Research Centre, Bengaluru.Following informed consent, 30 validated questions in MCQ format were administered to 246 students of MBBS phase II, phase III Part 1 and 2 during the academic year 2023-2024.Feedback was obtained on a five-point Likert scale.All data obtained was entered into Excel and analyzed by SPSS V22.Results: Mean SD of phase II students was 12.89 4.07, phase III part 1 13.30 4.02, and phase III part 2 13.80 3.95.On applying an independent "t" test, no significance was seen, indicating that not much information was lost.One question in each phase showed a difficulty index <30%, indicating a high level of difficulty.Five questions across all phases were scored >70%, indicating a low level of difficulty.None of the questions showed a good discrimination index across all phases. Conclusion:The study concludes that not much information is lost, which could be due to revisions happening as part of horizontal/vertical integrations during administering the CBME curriculum.Clinical significance: Repeated revisions of preclinical subjects during clinical years help students retain the knowledge and perform better in competitive exams like NeXT.