Opinion of a Group of Medical Students about the Importance of Clinical Cases Discussion as a Teaching Technique

Objective: to identify the opinion of a group of Medical Students about the usage of the discussion of clinical cases. Material and methods: cross-sectional study, semi-quantitative; a questionnaire was made for this purpose. The study took from January 2009 to May 2011. A group of 223 undergraduate students from eight universities from Sao Paolo, Brazil received an email which included the questionnaire and the detailed instructions for answering it. The questionnaire consisted of 11 questions related to the students experience after participating in teaching debates. The Likert scale was used to allow a quantitative analysis of the responses. Results: the average response for all the questions, quantitative analyzed, scored between 4.5 and 5 with an excellent impression of the students about the discussion of clinical cases discussion. The most outstanding elements were: learning, the scientific content, the quality of the presentation, the methodology discussion, way of teaching, contribution to the development of clinical reasoning, encouragement of the academic development and even the complexity of the case and the ability to understand with an average close to five (very good). The average score for all questions was 38.423 for a maximum of 40, with a very positive result.Conclusions: the methodology of the discussion of clinical cases caused an excellent impression and interest of Medical Students.