Introduction

The educational process in modern societies requires personal initiatives, both in the educational and the work context, and thus it is important for people to develop and regulate their cognitive competences throughout learning processes.

Aim

To describe the metacognitive skills of students taking the Specialisation in Family Medicine Course, in a centre in the state of Sonora.

Subjects and methods

A cross-sectional study was conducted to evaluate the development of metacognitive skills in all the students enrolled in the Specialisation in Family Medicine Course, at a centre in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora. The metacognitive skills inventory was applied after previously validating it and determining its reliability by means of a pilot test. Descriptive statistics, chi squared and Kruskall-Wallis were applied.

Results

Of the 36 students (63.9% females), with a mean age of 28.7 ± 1.9 years, 28 (78.8%) presented a high level of development in metacognitive skills, with a mean of 200.79, 203.13, 200.75 and 201.75 points for the first, second and third years and overall, respectively (p = 0.834; Kruskall-Wallis).

Conclusions

No differences are observed in the overall development of their metacognitive skills or in their subscales, among students in the three academic years at the residence. In the future, instruments that evaluate the student’s degree of social desirability of will have to be considered with the aim of controlling this bias.

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