Background: Pre-internship exam is very important due to its significant role in enhancing the medical students’ level of knowledge which undeniably determines the society’s health level. Therefore, investigation of different ways the students prepare for this exam is of great importance. Up to now, no research has been conducted on the rate of using these books and why they are so attractive to the students. Thus, the present study aimed to address this issue.
Methods: In this study cross-sectional, descriptive-analytic study, a researcher-made questionnaire was distributed among 86 participants of the pre-internship exam in September 2012. This questionnaire included questions about sex, type of quota, rate of continuous studying, number of hours of daily studying, aim of studying, source of studying, and reasons of choosing different sources. Then, the data were analyzed using the SPSS statistical software.
Results: In this study, 57.7% of the participants were female and 42.2% were male. In addition, 61.6% of the students stated that their aim was just passing the exam; while 31.4% expressed that they aimed to improve their medical knowledge. Moreover, 66.7% of the students studied extracurricular books, 11.2% studied the references announced by the ministry, 3.6% studied the professors’ notes, and 1.5% studied websites. Besides, 79.1% of the students used extracurricular books due to the vast advertisements of their publishing institutes and 73.3% said that these books were more easily accessible compared to the references announced by the ministry.
Conclusion: This study showed that the majority of the students used extracurricular books to prepare themselves for the pre-internship exam and only a small number of the students studied the resources announced by the ministry. This 6-fold ratio indicates the students’ greater tendency toward the extracurricular books.