Video recording feedback: a feasible and effective approach to teaching history-taking and physical examination skills in undergraduate paediatric medicine

Medical educators have always recognized the need to teach and train medical graduates and undergraduates the skills of conducting a consultation. Several authors have established the efficacy of using constructive feedback on videotape of each student's interaction with a patient to teach and enhance such skills. This study reports `students' perceptions' of the feedback process used in the Junior Paediatric Clerkship at the Faculty of Medicine of the United Arab Emirates University. An unexpected 73% of the respondents believed that self-observation influenced development of their clinical skills. More than 80% said that the feedback from instructors and peers helped them to improve their clinical skills, but they would have liked to have more than one of their consultations recorded and reviewed. It was found that 75% of the students felt that self-critique of their performance made them aware of their strengths and weaknesses and their skills in analysing and evaluating consultations had been enhanced. It was found from Kruskal Wallis one-way ANOVA that the students' professional attitude, empathy, and warmth towards the patients differed highly significantly ( P  = 0·0062, 0·0089, 0·0007, respectively) from self-assurance, self-confidence and competence. They were also deficient in certain areas of history-taking, interviewing skills, and physical examination techniques and perceived they needed more training in order to be proficient.