The study investigated medical students’ perception of peer tutoring learning strategy on clinical skills training at Macarthur Clinical Skills Laboratory (MCSL) during their Introduction to Clinical Medicine (ICM) sessions. It adopted the descriptive survey design. The population of the study was 98 medical students, 66 of these students were randomly selected .Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. The instrument titled Peer Tutoring and Clinical Skills Training (PTCST) was used to collect data and a reliability coefficient of 0.85 was obtained using Cronbach Alpha. Data was collected after exposing the students to clinical skills practical sessions for two weeks. The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation and the null hypotheses were tested using independence sample t-test. The findings of the study revealed that there is no significant difference between male and female medical students’ responses on their perception on the influence of peer tutoring on clinical skills training during Introduction to Clinical Medicine (ICM); irrespective of their gender, practicing among classmates enhanced their retention of the basic clinical do –steps, build up their confidence level as well as determined their proficiency level through the instant feedbacks. It was also revealed that during this practice sessions the medical students were sensitive to their gender differences and wished to maintain their dignity during clinical skills practical sessions. The researchers therefore recommends that Peer tutoring learning strategy should be adopted in clinical education while a chaperon should be made available for students during clinical skills practical sessions.
Keywords: Clinical Medicine, Clinical Skills, Gender, Learning Strategy, Peer tutoring, Training
