title: [Assessing the impact of undergraduate internship in solving clinical problems].
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Assess the impact of the undergraduate internship in the overall clinical competence and indicators on students who graduate from medical school.
  
  
  METHODS
  We performed a prospective comparative study among 56 medical students enrolled in undergraduate internship at public secondary care hospitals. We administered an ad-hoc instrument used to measure clinical competence at the end of their undergraduate studies and internship. The instrument included twelve clinical cases with 320 questions. The response options were "true", "false" and "do not know." We used nonparametric statistics for the analysis
  
  
  RESULTS
  Clinical competence improved at the end of undergraduate internship, reaching 22% of students who scored in the middle range of the clinical aptitude scale. This result was not applicable to the end of medical school where 96% of the students scored in the lower ranges of clinical competence.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The rotation of medical students in secondary care hospitals significantly improves the clinical skills acquired during their medical training, although scores remain low.
authors.affiliation: Escuela de Medicina Dr. José Sierra Flores, Universidad del Noreste, Tampico, Tamaulipas, México. vgomez@une.edu.mx
authors.forename: Victor
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Gómez-López
authors.forename: Sandra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rosales-Gracia
authors.forename: Jesús
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ramírez-Martínez
authors.forename: José
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: García-Galaviz
authors.forename: Alma
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Peña-Maldonado
authors.forename: Arturo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vázquez-Vázquez
mesh_terms: D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate; D007396:Internship and Residency; D011340:Problem Solving; D011446:Prospective Studies