Gap between theoretical and practical knowledge of basic medical procedures in medical students of D.U.H.S.

Objective: To evaluate and compare the level of knowledge and practical experience of fourth and final year students, of three basic medical procedures namely IV cannulation, urinary catheterization and nasogastric intubation. Methods: This was a cross-sectional survey of 400 fourth and final year M.B.B.S students, recruited by purposive sampling from Dow Medical College, Sindh Medical College and Dow International Medical College. A self-administered questionnaire was used and students were asked to retrospectively reflect on their clinical knowledge and skills of three basic medical procedures namely intra-venous cannulation, nasogastric tube intubation and urinary catheterization. Data was analyzed on SPSS v16.0 using simple descriptive statistics and chi-square test applied to calculate association of different variables with year of study with statistical significance set at 0.5