Impact of the Clinico-pathological Conferences as a teaching modality on medical students' performance in Endocrine Course.

Objective: To evaluate the impact of introducing clinico-pathological conferences in the endocrine block on student performance.
Methods: The retrospective pilot study was conducted at the College of Medicine, Alfaisal University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and comprised medical students' examination scores in the endocrine course from 2012 to 2016. The 2012 batch was not exposed to clinico-pathological conferences and represented the control group, whereas batches from 2013 to 2016 had consistent exposure. The assessment for each batch had been done annually using a standardised format of multiple-choice questions and short-answer questions. The data collected was analysed using SPSS 19.
Results: Of the 645 students whose records were evaluated, 62(9.6%) were controls in the 2012 batch, while 583(90.3%) were in batches from 2013 to 2016. The intervention group with exposure to clinico-pathological conferences performed better than the controls (p<0.001).
Conclusions: The students who were exposed to clinico-pathological conferences tended to achieve high examination score compared to those who were not exposed.