title: Medical students' perspective about role-plays as a teaching strategy in community medicine.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess the students' perspective about role-plays conducted as a teaching methodology in community medicine.
  
  
  METHODS
  A quasi-experimental study.
  
  
  METHODS
  Department of Community Medicine at Fatima Memorial College of Medicine and Dentistry from July to November 2010.
  
  
  METHODS
  A probability technique of simple random sampling was used to collect 63 students from the third and fourth year MBBS who were randomly distributed in five sub-groups. They were variously ascribed the roles of obsceners, participants and helpers. A questionnaire was distributed to collect student's responses. The data was analyzed on SPSS version 17 to compare the responses. Chi-square test was applied and p-value was fixed at < 0.05 as significant.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Sixty-three students were selected as participants of this study in which 46 belonged to the fourth year MBBS class (73%) and 17 were third year MBBS students (27%). There were 13 male (20.6%) and 50 female (79.4%) students. Role-plays were identified as most effective method of teaching (n = 25, 37.9%) followed by lectures (n = 17, 25.8%, p = 0.054). Fifty-two students (78.5%) admitted that role-plays improved their knowledge of the subject, 55 (84.6%) said that it will help them in their clinical performance. Fifty-nine participants (89.4%) found role-plays interesting and 49 (74.2%) wanted to incorporate role-plays as a part of curriculum. Fifty-six of the participants (88.9%) agreed that role-plays improved their communication skills. Twenty-one participants (31.8%) believed that it helped them in making acquaintance with the local situation. Forty-six students (76.7%) identified role-plays as a feasible way of andragogy (p = 0.005) and 48 (76.2%) said that it provoked critical thinking about the subject (p = 0.038). Fifty-four students (85.7%) admitted that their attention span was better in role-plays as compared to lectures (p = 0.047).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Role-plays were well accepted by the students as an effective teaching methodology and can be incorporated as a part of teaching strategies in Community Medicine.
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, FMH, College of Medicine and Dentistry, Shadman, Lahore. iramdr123@yahoo.co.in
authors.forename: Iram
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Manzoor
authors.forename: Fatima
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Mukhtar
authors.forename: Noreen Rahat
authors.initials: NR
authors.lastname: Hashmi
mesh_terms: D003154:Community Medicine / Q000193:education*; D003479:Curriculum / Q000592:standards*; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010154:Pakistan; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013337:Students, Medical; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult