A Survey on the Student Preconceptions about Physiology among the Students of Saveetha Dental College

Abstract

Medical Physiology is known to be a complex area where students develop significant errors in conceptual understanding. Anxiety, motivation and engagement with topics regarded as difficult to learn could potentially impact student success in these courses. Hence understanding both the prior knowledge students have coming into physiology programs and the change in thinking students have when graduating from physiology is essential to design an effective instructional approach. It is clear that misconceptions arise from every individual’s personal experience in the world of internally generated and hence perceptible forces and the perceived notion that results.

Materials and Methods: A self-administered questionnaire comprising about 10 questions was prepared and circulated through online among 100 individuals and the results were obtained.

Results: From the survey done it is found that most of the students have preconceived idea about physiology (97.9%).It is also found that nearly half of the sample population have the thought that learning physiology would be as difficult as any other subject of dentistry (41.4%).However the students quite remarkably are convinced of the fact that learning physiology would help them in dentistry (85.9%) and further they feel that if guidance given they would feel the subject lighter (78%).Very interestingly they accept the fact that their idea about physiology would probably change after a period of time (78.4%), probably in a positive and more appreciable way.

Conclusion: Prejudice and preconceived notions are actually a major problem of our brain. They create a “block” for free thought, and we become poor listeners and thinkers in the process. We should be aware of not to get caught in it as it may influence our learning process and may pose undue stress in learning the subject.