Evaluation of medical interns' learning of exposure to revised national tuberculosis control programme guidelines

As per the Medical Council of India (MCI), the posting in the Chest and TB department is elective during internship. Hence, they lack hands on exposure to various components of RNTCP programme. This gap in treating TB patients by using RNTCP guidelines may be bridged by sensitizing the interns through early exposure of medical interns to training programmes.

The workshop was conducted and evaluated, 1) To know learners' immediate reaction and 2) To know its effects on their learning and practice.

A series of training workshop on RNTCP guidelines was organized for Interns by the Core-committee of the State Task Force (STF), RNTCP and Department of Community Medicine, Sri Manakula Vinayagar Medical College and Hospital (SMVMCH), Puducherry, during January 2012-November 2012. A Pre and Post test self-administrated questionnaire, immediate feedback and other open-ended feedback after six months was obtained from Interns to know its effect on their clinical practice.

The pre and post test mean scores were highly significant (p<0.001). In the analysis of feedback, the consensus score for all the responses was above 75%. As per the responses of the feedback from interns taken after six months, the three broad categories of common responses from the manual content analysis emerged were: 1) Effect of training in patient care, 2) Acquaintance of RNTCP Guidelines, 3) Future Plan of application of lessons learned.

This training programme has been well received by the medical interns and has now been incorporated as a regular activity for the Interns posted in the Department of Community Medicine.