Investigating the scientific process skills of medical students in relation to medical decision making: Research on basic medical science competence

Background: Medical students are expected to convey scientific literacy and possess certain scientific skills prior to being admitted to medical schools. Laboratory practices being provided during their education play a crucial role in their professional development and the usefulness of these practices is possible and can be enriched if the students possess prior scientific skills. The purpose of this study is to determine the scientific process skills of second year medical students in Suleyman Demirel University, Faculty of Medicine, Turkey. Methods: The study was conducted in April 2006 by using the Scientific Process Skills Questionnaire (SPSQ) for laboratory practices. Randomly selected (n = 76) second year medical students participated in the study. Results: Nine basic scientific process skills were investigated. All of the students responded correctly to the question that measured their ability to interpret data. Students abilities to set up hypothesis and make estimations were found quite high. (94.7 %, 92.1 % respectively) The two skills that were challenging to students were the ability to make an observation and their proficiency in scales. The percentage of correct responses to those questions were 50 % and 50.5 % respectively. Conclusions: The study suggests that students in the study group possess the necessary scientific process skills at some degree (86 %). However, this ratio, thus the productivity of laboratory practices can be enhanced by building up on skills such as making observations and interpreting scales. Quality in medical education cannot be achieved if we do not provide our students with basic scientific process skills early in their education