Recall Knowledge of Biochemistry for Interns after Graduation from Medical Schools

New medical graduates were recruited duringtheir internship programme from 10 teaching hospitals for across-sectional study, carried out in Riyadh area, Kingdom ofSaudi Arabia. A total of 200 participants were included in thestudy. All the participants filled out the study questionnaire.The questionnaire contained 10 basic Biochemistry questionsthat the graduates were supposed to recall answers for thosequestions from their prior knowledge. Other informationincluded were gender, medical school attended, year ofgraduation, training hospital, whether preparing for boardexamination such as USMLE and PLAB. Results revealed thatout of the 200 participants recruited for this study, 124 weremales and 76 were females. 26% of the participants graduatedfrom medical schools adopting PBL curriculum whereas 74%were from traditional medical schools. Less than 10% of theparticipants correctly answered score ≥ 7 whereas 64% scored≥ 4 to 6 and only 26% scored less than 4 of the basicbiochemistry questions. Correlation of scores attained by theparticipants with other variables in the questionnaire revealedinteresting findings. Gender, time since graduation, trainingrotation and preparation for examinations showed nosignificant correlation with score. However, of the teachingapproach adopted by their schools of graduation showedsignificant correlation with score with P-value of 0.006.The findings suggest that basic biochemistry is perceived asa tough and irrelevant subject and expedite the need forreforms in the way the subject presented to the medicalstudents