The potential use of DREEM in assessing the perceived educational environment of postgraduate public health students

Dear Sir

Educational environment available to students influences their academic achievements, perceived well-being and aspirations. The Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure (DREEM) (Roff et al. 1997) is an objective measure of medical educational environment which is commonly used with undergraduate students. There are other instruments such as Postgraduate Hospital Educational Environment Measure, Surgical Theatre Educational Environment Measure and Anesthetic Theatre Educational Environment Measure available for specialties.

The five domains of DREEM – perception of learning, perception of course organizers, academic perception, perception of atmosphere and social perception – can be used to comprehensively assess the educational environment of postgraduate students also. There has been one attempt in the literature where educational environment available to students of Diploma in Family Medicine course was assessed (Khan et al. 2010). The present cross-sectional study attempted comparison of perceived educational environment experienced by students of two postgraduate public health courses, namely, Doctor of Medicine (MD Community Medicine) and Masters in Public Health (MPH) in India. MD is a three-year long course offered to doctors who have an undergraduate degree in Medicine (MBBS). MPH is offered to undergraduates of Medicine, Dentistry, postgraduate students of life sciences and is a two-year long course including six months internship. Although students are recruited through two separate entrance exams into these courses, there is a fair amount of overlap in the methodology of training, course content and the faculty members are also common to both.

Both the courses were found to have more positive than negative features to their credit and their scores were not significantly different except in the domain on perception of course organizers. Domain-wise and item-wise analyses highlighted the areas that needed attention to improve educational environment. All the students had attempted all the questions proving that DREEM was nonthreatening, respondent friendly and relevant. The results help to sustain performance in domains which were rated good and mend performance in domains rated below average. Periodic follow-up measurements can be used to look for trends in scores of various domains and evaluate any attempt or innovation to improve the educational environment. DREEM can be administered on postgraduate public health students with minimal modifications. With many new courses being conceived and initiated in the field of public health, DREEM may find use in the design and development of a course environment favourable to the students.