Authors:

Abstract

Background: Educational environment is defined as everything that happens within the classroom, faculty or university and is crucial for determining the success of medical education. Motivated learners in supportive environments demonstrate high levels of self-efficacy and performance. The educational environment is therefore crucial in determining the success of medical education.

Objectives: To ascertain student's perceptions regarding their learning environment at the newly established Jazan Women's Medical Faculty in order to identify strengths and weaknesses and design remedial measures for establishing a conductive pedagogical ethos in the institution.

Method: The validated tool, Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure (DREEM) was administered to 40 medical students in the 3rd year.

Results: Mean DREEM score for the study group was 91.36/ 200. The poorest scores were for Learning (19.28/ 48), Atmosphere(19.83/ 48) and Social (13.10/ 28) domains while best scores were for Teaching (22.80/ 44) and Academic(16.35/ 32) domains.

Conclusion: Our score is lower than global scores of most medical institutions of other countries and lies within league of 'generally poor scores' of a majority of contemporary Saudi medical schools which is a forewarning that some teaching-learning areas need improvement. There is a need to develop human resources and policy models in order to ensure and maintain quality in educational standards.

Keywords: DREEM, Teaching, Learning