Novel foundation course for medical students: student and faculty perspectives

Background: According to the National Medical Council (NMC) recommendation, the foundation course was carried out in our institution for I MBBS 2019 and 2020 students. The current study was done to solicit the viewpoints of the students and faculty members about the connection of the topics included in the foundation course.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out to seek the perspectives of students who took the foundation course and the faculties involving in teaching the topics allotted for the 2019 and 2020 MBBS students. Google Forms was used to collect the data, which was analyzed by Excel.

Results: The general experience of the students and faculty was uniformly positive for 100% for both students and faculty in the 2019 group, and 94.1% and 97.8% for students and faculty, respectively, in the 2020 group. In the 2019 group, the skills module was recognized as the most appropriate module in the foundation course with (77.8%), followed by sports and extracurricular activities module (both at 64.6%). In the 2020 group, the professional development and ethics module was recognized as most appropriate by 89.3% of students, followed by the orientation module (83.3%) and language & computer skills module (80.9%)

Conclusions: This Foundation Course for MBBS students provided before the start of the medical curriculum is a novel and useful step. Feedback from various colleges across India can help make this course still more useful.