The Journal of Medical Education and Development

Introduction: Medical universities have the important task of educating professional human resources. Familiarizing students with the university environment seems to be necessary to achieve a basic level of attitude and skills. Students entering the clinical externship course face difficulties such asunfamiliarity with hospital environment. Therefore, the student committee of Educational Development Center of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences and Yazd Standing Committee Of Medical Education (SCOME, IMSA- Yazd) designed and performed the study “We and Externship ” to make externs be familiar with the clinical environment.

Methods: The workshops took place in Shahid Sadoughi of Yazd hospital, in January 2014 and 2015. 4 interns (6^th and 7^th year medical students) explained the specifiedtopics . At the beginning and the end of the session, pretest and posttest were distributed among the participants. The satisfaction level was assessed at the end of the session.

Results: 65 (72.2%) out of 90 participants answered the questionnaires. The mean scores of pretest and posttest were 8.29± 3.28 and 15.59± 3.53, respectively. The presented topics resolved the educational need of 49 (73.3%) students. 31 students (47.7%) felt prepared to enter externship course after this workshop. 61 students (93.8%) said their information about this course has increased and for 57 students (88.7%) the topics of workshops were practical.

Conclusion: Familiarizing externs to the hospital environment and the rules of each wards in the hospital before the clinical course is necessary and it is suggested to put this externship course in the curriculum and the topics are taught by interns.