Medical Students’ Perception of the Educational Environment at College of Medicine: A Prospective Study with a Review of Literature

Abstract

Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM) inventory has been exhaustively used to evaluate the education environment (EE), especially in the health sector to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the program. This study was designed to investigate the medical students’ perceptions about the education environment (EE) of the College of Medicine (COM), Jeddah. This cross-sectional study was carried out on medical students and conducted between May and August 2020. A predesigned DREEM questionnaire written in English containing five subdomains was adopted to achieve the purpose of the study. A total of 220 students responded to the dispensed survey with a mean age of 21.97 (SD = 1.28). Male and female students represented 64.5% and 35.5% of the respondents, respectively, while most of them were in the fourth year of medical college (109, 49.5%), and the majority belonged to phase II (basic sciences) of the college (144, 65.4%). The overall total DREEM score for EE was 129.64 (SD = 31.81; 64.82%), and all the five subdomains of DREEM scored above 60% with the highest score by students’ academic self-perception (SASP) (21.22; 66.31%) and the lowest by students’ perception of learning (SPL) (30.16; 62.83%). Also, SASP2 was the highest scoring item with a mean of 3.13 (SD = 0.96), while SPA8 was the lowest with a mean score of 1.99 (SD = 1.38). We also compared our study with the available literature for contextual interpretations. The students’ assessment for EE of the medical program was positive; however, we identified a need for an improvement plan for six-weak scoring areas and one of the weak domains of DREEM i.e., students’ perception of teaching (SPT).

Evaluation of Problem-Based Learning in College of Medicine: An Indicator of Quality Education in a Hybrid Curriculum

“…Our students believed PBL lead to in-depth analysis and enhanced critical thinking with a balance division of work. This was also in line with our previous published studies on the educational environment using DREEM tool [28] and the student's feedback on choosing effective course coordinator [29]. In this study there's a clear improvement in satisfaction for all the three domains by the male students while the female's satisfaction improved only for the problems.…”

A Systematic Review of Publications Using the Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM) to Monitor Education in Medical Colleges in Saudi Arabia

“…Among different educational levels or study phases (preclinical and clinical), significant differences were found among students from medical colleges [39,42,46,49,52,55,57], applied medical science colleges [63,65], and dental colleges [20,74]. Similar conclusions were achieved worldwide [17,24,31,39,75].…”

“…Few articles mentioned significant differences among colleges [46,54,64], universities [47,60], and specialties [62,64], and other studies indicated significant differences among parameters such as marital status and cumulative grades [69,73]. Among different educational levels or study phases (preclinical and clinical), significant differences were found among students from medical colleges [39,42,46,49,52,55,57], applied medical science colleges [63,65], and dental colleges [20,74]. Similar conclusions were achieved worldwide [17,24,31,39,75].…”

Navigating post COVID-19 education: an investigative study on students’ attitude and perception of their new normal learning environment

“…Emphasis needs to place on making the learning atmosphere stress-free by encouraging students to interact and participate more both in physical and virtual platforms. A healthy and efficient educational environment is essential for nurturing both the professional and personal growth of future health professional students ( Aga et al, 2021 ). The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted medical schools around the world, with the Middle East being no exception ( Gordon et al, 2020 ).…”