One year's experience with a clinical skills resource centre

Objectives To describe our experience of teaching clinical skills to first-year medical students in a new problem-based curriculum. Design Prospective evaluation of clinical skills acquisition using objective measures. Setting Students were taught in a purpose-designed clinical skills resource centre in weekly structured sessions. Subjects All 210 first year medical undergraduates in the first year of a new problem-based and clinically oriented course. Results Student performance in structured objective examinations improved over 1 year. In all but one of nine matched stations, involving history, examination and procedural skills, improvements were significant. Ninety-three per cent thought that the appropriateness of the skills training course to other course elements was 'good' or 'very good'. Conclusions First-year medical students can learn a wide range of clinical skills. Integrated teaching of clinical skills improves satisfaction with undergraduate studies.