Abstract:
Introduction: Background knowledge in physiology is essential for clinical practice. Physiology is perceived as a difficult
subject. The nature of the subject, the teaching methodologies and student factors are contributing factors for difficulty.
Objective: To elucidate the medical students’ perception of the difficulty of topics in the physiology and why those topics are
perceived difficult.
Methods: A descriptive cross sectional study design was employed. The third-year undergraduate medical students (n =140)
were asked to identify the topics they had difficulty understanding, the reasons for their difficulties and the strategies they
used to deal with that difficult topics. Data were entered to Epi data and exported to Stata 14 for further analysis.
Results: The overall satisfaction of students with physiology learning was 62.1%. The majority of students (48%) found that
the nervous system is the most difficult topic whereas the least difficult is the gastrointestinal system (0.7%). Sixty-three
(45.7%) students were believed that the difficulty of the topic is because of the nature of the course and 30.4% of students
speculated the ways of teaching. Forty seven percent were used online educational videos to support their learning.
Conclusion: In this study students perceived that physiology is not a difficult subject to learn. The most difficult topic was the
physiology of the nervous system. The nature of the topic was the perceived reason for topic difficulty. Students were looking
at free educational videos for clarification and almost none of them were approaching instructors for help.
