Poor attendance by students of medical schools, and application of a novel method to improve the attendance

Background Recently, physical class-attendance of students has drastically reduced in medical schools. Many reasons have been postulated and several remedial measures advocated.Methods In order to improve the students’ attendance in classes, we used a novel method by including a real patient-scenario relating to the day’s topic. We removed the case scenario from the posting of lecture note on Learning Management System (LMS) the previous evening. We also involved the students in the case discussion during the lecture which makes the lecture interactive. Student attendance was reported for three lectures before and after application of the new strategy.Results The student average attendance for both year 3 and year 4 was reported before and after applying the intervention. By statistical analysis of the attendance percentage, there was an increase in the average of attendance and this increase was found highly significant, which indicates an improvement in the student class-attendance after applying the proposed modification in lecture delivery and hand out posting on LMS.Discussion Starting the class with a patient-scenario based on the topic, and motivating the students to participate in the open Q and A discussion makes the lecture more interesting for the students. Since they will face the patients with common problems during their clerkship training, starting in next few months to a year, which makes it more meaningful. By analyzing the class attendance average for a minimum of three classes before and after implementing this intervention, we noticed a significance improvement in the overall attendance for both year 3 and year 4.