Objective

2

To explore the application of Mini-Clinical Evaluation Exercise (Mini-CEX) in the clinical internship and teaching stages of the "two-stage" education of traditional Chinese internal medicine.

Methods

2

A total of 116 students who were doing their intership from September to December 2022 in a five-year traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) program were selected from the First Department of Gastroenterology in the Affiliated Hospital of Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. By means of a table of random numbers

they were divided into the experimental group and the control group

with 58 students in each group. While the control group was taught in the traditional way

the experimental group received TCM-Mini-CEX. Relevant assessment scales were used to evaluate and compare the two groups of students in terms of their clinical competence and satisfaction with different ways of clinical teaching.

Results

2

Before the clinical internship

there was no statistically significant difference in the scores of clinical competence between the two groups (

P

>

0.05). After the internship

however

the scores of the experimental group were higher than those of the control group with statistically significant differences (

P

<

0.01) although the scores of both groups were higher than those before the internship with statistically significant differences (

P

<

0.01). Furthermore

the total satisfaction scores of students in experimental group were higher than those in control group (

P

<

0.05).

Conclusion

2

In the teaching reform incorporating the two stages of theoretical study and clinical internship

the application of TCM-Mini-CEX can obviously improve the clinical competence of the students

equipping them with better TCM clinical skills.