Research Report
Learning in the Real Place: Medical Students’ Learning and Socialization in Clerkships at One Medical School Heeyoung Han, PhD, Nicole K. Roberts, PhD, and Russell Korte, PhD
Abstract Purpose To understand medical students’ learning experiences in clerkships: learning expectations (what they expect to learn), learning process (how they learn), and learning outcomes (what they learn). Method Using a longitudinal qualitative research design, the authors followed the experiences of 12 participants across their clerkship year (2011–2012) at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. Interview data from each participant were collected at three points (preclerkship, midclerkship, and postclerkship) and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Additionally, the authors observed participants
Clerkships are the first immersive
learning environments where medical students start transferring their classroom learning to the real world. Students have preclerkship clinical experiences with standardized patients or shadowing, but entering into clerkships is an exciting time for students because it marks the beginning of real-world learning to be a doctor. However, this transition requires them to undergo different learning experiences where they face considerable
through a full clerkship day to augment the interviews. Results Before clerkships, students expected to have more hands-on experiences and become more knowledgeable by translating textbook knowledge to real patients and practicing diagnostic thinking. During clerkships, students experienced ambiguity and subjectivity of attending physicians’ expectations and evaluation criteria. They perceived that impression management was important to ensure that they received learning opportunities and good evaluations. After clerkships, students perceived that their confidence increased in navigating the health care environments and interacting
ambiguity and uncertainty.1,2 During this time students observe the practices, values, and norms of medical professionals in action. In addition, they are expected to “hit the ground running” by participating in low-risk tasks, taking initiative, and engaging in discussion about patient care. Successful adjustment to this real-place learning environment is not predicted by students’ preclinical knowledge and skills.3 Introduction
Dr. Han is assistant professor, Department of Medical Education, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Springfield, Illinois. Dr. Roberts is associate professor, Department of Medical Education, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Springfield, Illinois. Dr. Korte is assistant professor, Organization Learning, Performance, and Change, School of Education, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado. Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Han, Department of Medical Education, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, 913 North Rutledge St., PO Box 19681, Springfield, IL 62794-9681; telephone: (217) 545-8536; fax: (217) 545-0120; e-mail: [email protected]. Acad Med. 2015;90:231–239. First published online October 28, 2014 doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000000544
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Students’ learning in clerkship has been much studied to understand their professional identity formation and socialization.4,5 Boys in White, the classic book on students’ socialization in medicine, depicts how medical students become socialized into the profession and the culture in medical training.6 Several recent studies shed additional light. Krupat and colleagues7 found that students tended to react positively to most clerkship events regardless of whether they were positive or negative. According to their findings, students perceived even negative events such as physicians’ poor behaviors as lessons
with patients, attendings, and residents. However, they felt that there were limited opportunities to practice diagnostic thinking. Students could not clearly discern the decision-making processes used by attending physicians. Although they saw many patients, they perceived that their learning was at the surface level. Conclusions Students’ experiential learning in clerkships occurred through impression management as a function of dynamic social and reciprocal relationships between students and attendings or residents. Students reported that they did not learn comprehensive clinical reasoning skills to the degree they expected in clerkships.
learned, as those clerkship experiences also help them get a better sense of the system. O’Brien and colleagues8 reported that clerkship directors perceived students struggling with applying knowledge to clinical reasoning and engaging in self-directed learning, which students rarely recognized as struggles. Instead, they spent their energies struggling with uncertainty in their roles and responsibilities, expectations on their clinical performance, and the logistics of clinical settings.8 As those two studies indicated, students’ experiences in clerkships are characterized as socialization to get a better sense of the health care system and their roles as future doctors. These studies fit within the socialization literature, which focuses on students’ feelings and experiences in terms of professional identity formation. This avenue of study is less concerned with what students learn or expect to learn while on clerkships. Thus, while students’ experiences in clerkships have been investigated, it is still not clear what students expect to learn, how they learn in clerkships, and what they actually learn. Therefore, the
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purpose of this study was to develop a more holistic understanding of medical students’ learning in clerkships by following students for the entire year of clerkship—specifically focusing on their learning expectations (what they expect to learn), learning process (how they learn), and learning outcomes (what they learn). To investigate these questions, we adopted the concept of legitimate peripheral participation in situated learning as an analytical lens to view students’ learning processes.9 In this view, students as newcomers learn through gradual participation in central tasks to become experienced members. Additionally, students’ social interactional processes of learning become the center of understanding of their learning experience rather than independent learning. Socialization, visualization, and imitation processes within the context of a community of practice help medical students to contextualize and apply the more abstract and decontextualized knowledge learned in previous years. Method
We used a longitudinal qualitative approach as the research design. A longitudinal approach is fundamental to investigate students’ entire experience of the clerkship year. We followed the study participants across their entire clerkship year (2011–2012), which entailed three in-depth interviews and one daylong observation for each participant. Given the students’ significant commitment to this study for one year, we provided the participants with compensation ($100) for their participation. The institutional review board at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine deemed this study exempt. Setting and participants The study setting was at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, which uses a problem-based learning curriculum in the first two years to teach basic sciences and clinical knowledge. Clinical faculty come from a school-based multispecialty practice, a communitybased multispecialty practice, and various family medicine clinics in the area. The school is affiliated with two hospitals. In the third year, students have six clerkship rotations: internal medicine; surgery; psychiatry; pediatric; family and community medicine; and obstetrics–gynecology (OB/GYN). In
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the fourth year, students have additional clerkships including neurology, electives, and residency planning activities. We invited all 78 third-year medical students to participate, and 12 students voluntarily participated in this study. Since two of us have been involved in the curriculum at the school, we were confident that the participants represented the class appropriately in terms of high, mid, and low academic performance. Further, the participants were ethnically diverse, though in the interest of maintaining confidentiality we do not report the ethnicity of the participants. Data collection The interviews were semistructured. We based interview protocols on the research questions and previous studies of the experiences of students transitioning from school to work.10 As seen in Appendix 1, preclerkship interviews investigated students’ prior health professional experiences, learning expectations, and concerns about clerkships. Midclerkship interviews covered four major areas: comparing actual experience with expectations, applying medical knowledge to practice, interpersonal interactions, and learning the norms of practice. Postclerkship interviews elaborated on the previous two interviews and captured the students’ reflections on their experiences in terms of learning outcomes. We conducted preclerkship interviews after the second year and before the first day of clerkships (June–July 2011). Midclerkship interviews were in middle of their third year (November 2011–January 2012); therefore, the students were in various clerkships when they had the midclerkship interview. As the students completed their third year, we invited them to the postclerkship interview (June–July 2012). Generally, interviews were conducted by all three of us. One researcher followed the interview protocol, and the others asked questions to elaborate and probe students’ responses in-depth using the critical incidents technique.11–13 Using this interviewing technique, we asked students to recall a specific incident in which they described their experience in clerkships. For instance, students were asked to recall a specific time when they felt they were included in patient care activities. We recorded and transcribed all interviews for analysis. After each interview, we
discussed new and reoccurring insights from the interview. Through the discussions, we agreed that the data collection was reaching the saturated level as no new information was appearing from the 11th or 12th interviews.14 Additionally, with permission from students and their clerkship at the time of the midclerkship interview, we observed all participants except one student through a full day of their clerkship experience and developed a set of field notes to augment the data sources. One of us followed a student from the start to the end of a clerkship day—for instance, from 6 am to 5 pm. The observations were spread out throughout the clerkship year, from September 2011 to June 2012. All three of us collaboratively completed 11 observations since 1 observation did not happen because of a logistic issue. There was no standardized field note form; we recorded the key activities and interactions, along with contextual details by taking detailed notes. Data analysis We analyzed the transcriptions using grounded theory methods.15,16 Grounded theory is a qualitative research approach that aims to construct a substantive theory from the concepts and themes that emerge from data through an inductive procedure.17,18 This method emphasizes constant comparison of data, which entails testing emerging themes by comparing them with the original data across all interviews.16 With the research questions as a guide, all three of us carefully read the transcripts and attached initial, descriptive codes to statements; retrieved statements having the same descriptive codes and carefully reread the retrieved statements for open coding; and categorized the open codes to identify themes that emerged through a constant comparative process across the data. The coding process started with two calibrating meetings to discuss coding rules and process to enhance interrater agreement in the coding process. In addition, we all coded seven transcripts together. These “calibration” meetings took place throughout the analysis, thus promoting a high level of agreement about how we coded and analyzed the transcripts. Each transcript took approximately two hours to code. Therefore, we spent approximately 14 hours improving our interrater
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agreement. The other 29 transcripts were divided and assigned to each researcher, who coded transcripts independently. We used a qualitative data analysis software, Atlas.ti version 7 (Berlin, Germany: ATLAS.ti GmbH) to help manage the coding and analysis processes. Open coding of all transcripts yielded 2,027 codes, which we analyzed and categorized into themes through density (number of times a code was used in analysis) and groundedness (degree to which the code is related to other codes). We also used the field notes to check the results during the constant comparative data analysis. In this way, the field notes were used as a way to triangulate the data analysis and interpretation of findings. Results
Of 78 eligible students, 12 voluntarily participated in this study. Seven students were female. Each participant completed all three interviews. Eleven observations were conducted since one observation did not happen because of a logistic issue. Table 1 summarizes our findings related to the research questions, including illustrative comments from students’ interviews. Learning expectations (preclerkship) Before students started their clerkship rotations, they were generally excited to learn in real-world settings, yet they seldom came up with specific learning expectations. In fact, most students wondered if they should have learning expectations. Participants generally seemed to feel that they would be passive recipients of an already-created curriculum. With more in-depth probing questions, they came up with what they would like to learn in clerkships and how they envisioned the clerkship learning. Below are several themes that emerged from our analyses of their preclerkship interviews. Hands-on experiences. The students wanted to have hands-on experiences throughout their clerkship experiences. All participating students had had some prior health care experience including shadowing, volunteering in health care settings, medical mission trips, or social work prior to becoming a medical student. Some of them had family members who were doctors. They were familiar with the health care
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profession and environments at some level. Therefore, they believed that simple shadowing would be neither exciting nor helpful for their clerkship learning. While they understood that some level of shadowing and observation would occur, they expected to learn through actual hands-on experiences. Realistic learning to become a real doctor. Students expected their clerkship experiences to provide realistic learning. Students were excited about clerkships because they expected to be in real settings with real doctors. The students expected to learn by seeing real patients and being in real clinical settings. They had previously been in clinical settings through their shadowing or volunteering works before becoming a medical student; however, at that time their experience of being in a clinical setting was not necessarily as a doctor-intraining. During clerkships, they expected a more solid and professional role. They were no longer going to be “shadows” at the margins of the activity, but expected to be part of the care team. Anticipation of being an insider, of learning the inner workings of the hospitals and clinics, excited students as they looked forward to their clerkships. Textbook learning translated into realworld practice. The students expected their clerkship experiences to allow them to translate their book knowledge into actual clinical practice. The students wanted to see how diseases appeared in real patient cases. They acknowledged that there probably is a discrepancy between textbook learning and real-world practice. For example, they were told that a drug that they learned about in class would not be used in the clinical setting. The students wanted to learn what drugs physicians actually use and how diseases are treated in practice. Whereas they recently completed learning about diseases and health care more abstractly through textbooks and classroom learning, in clerkships they expected to learn more about how this knowledge was applied in practice. Being more knowledgeable. Students envisioned themselves becoming more knowledgeable through the opportunities to practice their clinical reasoning by applying their knowledge to real patient cases. Students wanted to have the
opportunities to think through actual patient cases and arrive at diagnoses just like practicing doctors do. Deciding on a specialty. Given that all the students had prior health care experiences, some of them had an overall idea regarding what specialty they would pursue. However, they were still open to changing their minds because they had not been exposed to all specialties. They expected to learn more about a variety of specialties so that they could make a more informed choice about their careers. Learning process (midclerkship) With great excitement, students started their clerkship rotations. Some students started long clerkships (10 weeks) including surgery and internal medicine while the other students started short clerkships (6 weeks) including pediatrics, OB/GYN, psychiatry, and family community medicine. Below are students’ experiences gathered midway through their clerkships in relation to how they learn. Navigating environments. Students reported that during the clerkship they learned to navigate different clinical and social/professional environments. Students experienced a higher level of uncertainty and ambiguity in the hospitals and clinics than they expected, and therefore they often reported spending time figuring out what to do, how to do it, where to be, and why things were done the way they were. They found that the attendings created their learning environments. Different attendings had different styles of teaching, expectations, and evaluation criteria. These idiosyncrasies made the students’ learning processes highly uncertain and ambiguous. Many also believed that these idiosyncrasies made their evaluations more subjective than they expected. Therefore, it was a crucial process for students to figure out each attending physician’s expectations and preferences. Moreover, because students were assigned to different attendings almost every week in a clerkship, the navigation associated with determining expectations was a constant activity in their learning processes. Learning by doing through impression management. As they expected, students learned by doing. Typically, they were
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Table 1 Themes of Clerkship Learning Expectations, Learning Process, and Learning Outcomes, From a Qualitative Study of 12 Medical Students’ Learning Experiences and Socialization in Clerkships, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, 2011–2012 Research questions and themes
Illustrative quotations
Learning expectations Hands-on experiences I assume that it’ll be some combination of hopefully they follow the see one, do one, and teach one, because I think that students just learn better that way. I’m hoping it’s not exactly like a straight shadowing experience. [participant #9, female] Realistic learning to become a real doctor
I’m really excited for clerkships, because I feel like it’ll be a very realistic learning about what—how to be a doctor, what medicine entails, how to interact with patients and what those really vital pieces of information are that help you practice. [participant #8, female]
Textbook learning translated into realworld practice
I think this is going to be more patient care and being able to identify diseases and learn about treatment when it comes to dealing with real patients. I think that there’s a difference between learning about something in a textbook. It is about seeing an actual patient and learning how to identify the disease process in real life. What that looks like and how you’re supposed to treat that. And that’s what I’m expecting clerkship is going to be like, but I actually don’t really know. [participant #7, female]
Being more knowledgeable
I think I’ll be better at thinking through clinical situations. Just starting basically from scratch or with limited information and working through a patient’s case and knowing what to ask next. What physical exam to do next. And ultimately, what lab exams to do and how to use those things to the most efficiently, work to a diagnosis. [participant #2, male]
Deciding on a specialty
One year from now I expect to know 100%. I expect the next 12 months to be the time where I would really, really consider different things and come to a decision. [participant #2, male]
Learning process Navigating environments
It was really important right away to kind of figure out what’s expected of you. When you start on inpatient or outpatient, depending on who is it you’re with—if you’re with a clinician, if you’re with a resident. Just kind of figure out and ask what do you want me to do? What’s kind of my role? ‘Cause everything’s a little different whether you’re on psychiatry, whether you’re on the labor delivery floor, and what’s expected of me while I’m here. And just doing that right away smoothes the whole time you’re going to be there out. [participant #10, male]
Learning by doing through impression management
What I noticed was the people who I think put in the most time and showed interest, not only with actively listening, asking relevant questions, being knowledgeable, and prepared, for questions. I think those were the people who showed trust. [participant #3, male] I just figured the more that you show you’re willing to try something, or learn something, the more responsibility you’re given by the attendings I think. [participant #12, male] You kind of gather that one of the common questions is what do you want to do? Some people have a hard time answering that. I wanted to do family medicine. So luckily I had interest in everything. But I think sometimes people are worried that, whenever they’re on pediatrics and they say they want to do psych. The pediatric residents really won’t take an interest, because this isn’t really relevant to what they want to do. So I think that’s one way that the trust develops is that, oh, you’re interested in what I like and what I’m doing. And so that you’ll be interested in that. And then there’s also people who even if they want to do something [else], they’re still interested in learning what they’re there for. But the people who for whatever reason show that they don’t want to be there, then there’s very little trust there. And it’s just kind of very minimal learning opportunities. [participant #3, male]
Balancing between clinical work and studying
It’s a hard balance between clinical duties and then actual building in study time to study for yourself and for the written examination. I think throughout the course of the clerkships, that was the biggest challenge. You wanted to do well as far as being supportive for the team and being there, and patient care. But the end of the day, there was always time where you need to go back and study the basics in clinical science for yourself. Because at the end of the day there’s going to be a Shelf exam at the end of the clerkship. You can’t get around that. So I think that the hardest balance was that. And then, you would learn things from working with the team too, so. It was just a hard balance of how much time do I need to be here doing clinical stuff and how much time should I be at home studying. [participant #10, male]
Learning outcomes Confidence increased in interactions and environmental management
Well, I think I’ve always felt pretty comfortable working with other people. But it’s my confidence level working as a medical student has changed. [participant #3, male]
Limited opportunities to practice diagnostic thinking
In obstetrics, for example, the focus is on getting this baby out healthy. So the focus isn’t necessarily on the problem or the diagnostic process and the way to think about things. So in some ways I’d say in like OB, for example, the way they teach students, or the way I think they do teach students more in the way to think through different clinical situations and problems, and like differential diagnosis lists. Those come through like the didactic sessions and the lectures. [subject #2, male] I feel like third year’s a good introduction into all the things that we need to be exposed to have, at least seen some aspects of medicine. But not necessarily have in-depth knowledge or be able to speak competently about tons of things. But just to be able to say, oh, I’ve seen that or be aware of the terminology at least, so that we all have a similar background. [participant #11, female]
Decision about specialty
I originally wanted to do neurosurgery once I went through that. I thought that was great. I liked all the procedures. And I liked kind of the science behind it. So that was my plan that I was working with. And then I started this clerkship my first two weeks were interventional cardiology. And he would have me, allow me to do the procedures, the catheterization and all that. And after a few of those start to realize that you can actually do it and maybe not risking, missing the artery quite so much as the first time. That was pretty fun. I felt like I had a hold on that. So that actually changed my focus in what I wanted to do. [participant #2, male]
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assigned patients to see in every rotation. By seeing patients or being allowed to do simple procedural tasks, students felt that they were recognized and invited to be part of the health care team. There were also moments where students took initiative to do things because invitations were sometimes unclear or not explicit. Students reported that an important part of their learning process required them to manage impressions. Students realized that how they were perceived by others (especially first impressions) directly affected their learning opportunities. One of the useful tips shared among students included the various preferences of different attendings, to which they needed to adapt. Students also realized that asking questions was an important way to demonstrate that they were interested, smart, and prepared for whatever the attending would ask them to do. However, students believed that asking a question perceived as “stupid” or demonstrating little knowledge or interest was perilous to their success because attendings would perceive them as neither smart nor prepared for some clinical work, which would affect subsequent evaluations. When asked a question, students felt that they needed to answer the question. Otherwise, they would create a poor impression. If seen in a positive way, students felt that attendings would trust and invite them to practice and allow them to be more involved in the patient care process. Students felt that they were being evaluated all the time and that, by managing impressions, students could receive better evaluations and earn more experiential learning opportunities. Students’ awareness of impression management also governed their learning relationships when on a rotation in a specialty that did not interest them. On these clerkships, students had to balance the energy needed to appear to be interested with the energy they needed to study for board examinations and topics of more interest to them. Balancing between clinical work and studying. Students felt that they needed to be better at time management. They found that it is not easy to be present on the floor and still find time to study for the shelf examinations that culminated the clerkship. Students spoke of carrying review materials with them so that
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they could study during downtime. An important task was to find an appropriate place to study in each rotation where they could still be seen as available and not accused of “disappearing” and thus forced to the sidelines or assigned tasks of little importance. Some clerkships were structured to allow for time to study. In psychiatry, for example, students had relatively short days in hospitals and clinics. Students were relieved to have time allocated for studying because this was an important part of the program. Learning outcomes (postclerkship) After they finished their six clerkships, we asked participating students what they felt they had learned, if their confidence changed, and if so, in what ways. Further, the questions targeted their initial learning expectations to see if their expectations were met. Below are several themes that emerged from the postclerkship interviews. Confidence increased in interactions. Students reported that their overall confidence increased after the clerkship experiences. Specifically, students described far more confidence in interacting with patients, residents, attendings, and staff in hospitals and clinics than they had before their clerkships. They also felt more comfortable conducting real patient encounters. They felt that they had learned to manage their relationships with residents, attendings, and staff effectively. Further, they felt more comfortable with navigating the health care environment having developed a better understanding of how things work in hospitals and clinics, including a greater awareness of the norms that guide behaviors and work processes. Limited opportunities to practice diagnostic thinking. Whereas students had expected to become more skilled at applying medical knowledge to clinical work and coming up with differential diagnoses and plans for patient cases, they perceived that there were far too few opportunities for them to practice or observe comprehensive diagnostic thinking. Students could come up with their own diagnoses as they saw patients; however, their hypotheses and diagnostic thinking were neither heard nor coached by attendings or residents on a regular basis. Students perceived that their knowledge was still rather
superficial. Students felt comfortable with simple cases yet not very confident in reasoning through the complex cases they encountered. In the hospital setting, diagnoses and plans were often decided even before students saw the patients. For example, the surgical decision-making process was not easily visible to clerkship students because they were not necessarily in the clinic with the surgeon on the day the decision to operate was made. Students reported that learning diagnostic thinking did not happen as much as they hoped because of attendings’ busy work schedules and students’ limited responsibility in patient care. Decisions about specialty. Prior to the clerkship experiences, most participating students had some ideas regarding what specialty they would be interested in based on their prior experiences. After the clerkship year, students came to a better understanding about what specialty they would pursue. Several students described a type of “decision tree” to explain how they decided on their specialties. For example: “Do you like procedures? If yes, then Surgery or OB. If you like babies, OB. If not, some aspect of Surgery. If you don’t like procedures, do you like variety? If yes, then Family Medicine. Do you like puzzles and thinking? If yes, then Internal Medicine.” Students also found that having a good relationship with an attending who drew them into the practice was helpful in guiding their choice on a specialty. Discussion
On the basis of longitudinal interviews with 12 medical students across a year of clerkships, we found that participants’ learning in clerkships occurs within the context of dynamic social and reciprocal relationships between students and attendings or residents. Students earn learning opportunities through building trust, which is achieved through impression management. Impression management is an important yet unwritten norm in clerkships because attendings’ evaluation and teaching style are characterized by ambiguity and subjectivity.19,20 It is the learner’s responsibility to determine, on a personby-person, place-by-place basis, what the parameters of acceptable performance are. Beagan21 found that medical students learn to not challenge clinicians, further
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suggesting that if students do not appear to be compliant they will have poor evaluations, which will affect their future careers. Consistent with Beagan’s findings,21 we found that the process of impression management explains the dynamic, reciprocal relationships enacted between students and attendings.22,23 When students represent themselves in positive ways (i.e., impression management), teachers including attendings and residents are more inclined to trust them, teach more, and evaluate them positively. A recent study reported that students had higher expectations of their own skill development than clinical faculty had.24 This finding may be related to students’ desire to impress faculty so that they “earn” learning opportunities. A surprising finding of this study is that there exists a gap between students’ learning expectations and their actual learning experience in terms of learning clinical reasoning in clerkships. Being able to think through a patient case using medical knowledge to come up with a differential diagnosis, assessment, and plan is one of the core objectives of medical training. One of the overall objectives for the third-year clerkship curriculum in general is to prioritize patients’ problems, formulate appropriate differential diagnoses, and develop plans for diagnosis and management. However, most of our participating students reported that they did not learn clinical reasoning skills as expected in the clerkship environment. Expert physicians’ diagnostic thinking was not easily visible to students during clinical work in hospitals and clinics. Students reported few opportunities to practice comprehensive diagnostic thinking in their clerkships. Audétat and colleagues25 recently reported that clinical educators themselves had little training in clinical reasoning and perceived their role as role modeling rather than systematic teaching to developing clinical reasoning. The literature indicates that it is the learners’ responsibility to assimilate the experts’ clinical reasoning skills. However, as our findings support, the role modeling for clinical reasoning is marginally effective and not visible to medical students in clerkships. This gap between expectations and actual outcomes of clerkship learning regarding clinical reasoning is surprising, yet it has been documented previously. Williams and colleagues26 reported that the clinical reasoning ability of students from five
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medical schools did not increase during third-year clerkships despite significant improvement in years one and two. As Prince and colleagues27 found, one may argue that students have difficulty in applying medical knowledge to real clinical practice because they do not have sufficient basic science knowledge. However, it is also reasonable to assume that medical students come to the third-year clerkships with an expectation to develop clinical reasoning skills and knowledge through guided practices and applications to clinical practice in real health care places. They expected to engage in legitimate peripheral participation, with their skills and abilities honed through the mentoring and coaching of experts. However, both the prior literature and our findings indicate that this expectation is not met in clerkships. This study has two limitations. First, the study setting included only one medical school. Schools with different clerkship curricula or with a different student population may have different findings. Second, student participation was voluntary; therefore, the group may not represent the entire student population. However, the students who volunteered represented a wide range of achievement and were ethnically diverse. Further studies are warranted to discern the barriers that prevent students from learning diagnostic thinking within the clerkship environment. While it is of pressing concern to clerkship directors and medical school faculty, the sources of the problem are likely multiple.8,25 For instance, there may be little focused time for teaching diagnosis and planning, or little direct contact between learner and teacher in environments where the expert can model his or her approach, and little time to allow the learner to practice with guidance. Given that coming up with diagnoses and plans is the real job of a physician and the objective of medical training, it is imperative to determine the environmental, professional, and social barriers to the modeling and explicit teaching that would convey these skills. Further, it will be important to assess to what degree the ambiguity and constant change (environment and teacher) interfere with students’ learning. Acknowledgments: The authors are grateful to the students for their time and thoughtful contributions to this study. The authors also thank the clerkship directors, physicians, residents, staff, and others that allowed the observation of their work.
Funding/Support: Funding for the student stipend was provided by the Department of Medical Education at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine (SIU SOM). Other disclosures: None reported. Ethical approval: This study was reviewed and deemed exempt by the institutional review board at SIU SOM. Previous presentations: Elements of this study were presented at the Association of American Medical Colleges annual meeting, November 5, 2012, San Francisco, California; and the Central Group on Educational Affairs meeting, March 23, 2013, Cincinnati, Ohio.
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clerkship: A national survey. Teach Learn Med. 2013;25:71–76. Beagan BL. “Even if I don’t know what I’m doing I can make it look like I know what I’m doing”: Becoming a doctor in the 1990s. Can Rev Sociol Anthropol. 2001;38:275–292. Blau PM. Exchange and Power in Social Life. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books; 1986. Cropanzano R, Mitchell MS. Social exchange theory: An interdisciplinary review. J Manage. 2005;31:874–900. Wenrich M, Jackson MB, Scherpbier AJ, et al. Ready or not? Expectations of faculty and medical students for clinical skills preparation for clerkships. Med Educ Online.
2010;15. http://med-ed-online.net/index. php/meo/article/download/5295/pdf_19. Accessed October 15, 2014. 25 Audétat MC, Dory V, Nendaz M, et al. What is so difficult about managing clinical reasoning difficulties? Med Educ. 2012;46:216–227. 26 Williams RG, Klamen DL, White CB, et al. Tracking development of clinical reasoning ability across five medical schools using a progress test. Acad Med. 2011;86: 1148–1154. 27 Prince KJ, Boshuizen HP, van der Vleuten CP, Scherpbier AJ. Students’ opinions about their preparation for clinical practice. Med Educ. 2005;39:704–712.
Appendix 1 Interview Protocols, From a Qualitative Study of 12 Medical Students’ Learning Experiences and Socialization in Clerkships, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, 2011–2012 Preclerkship Interview Guide for Medical Students Entering Clerkships Categories
Questions or actions
Introduction and overview of study
• • • •
Learning expectations • Learning goals • Learning process to achieve the learning goals • Knowledge, skills, and attributes for successful learning in clerkships
Closing
Introductory remarks. State the purpose of the study. Consent process and form: Anonymity of data (explain how anonymity will be guarded). Introduction of the research team: I am with ______ University and we are interested in understanding education and clerkship experience for medical students. • Provide consent form and explain consent process, answer questions, ask for consent (interview and recording). Icebreaking questions: • I want to focus our discussion today on your learning expectations and goals of clerkships. I might ask questions in different ways and even get really detailed because this is the data I need to do a good study. The more detail the better. • What kind of health professional experience did you have before? • Based on what you have learned so far, what do you expect to learn (more) during third-year clerkships? • What kinds of experiences do you expect you will have that will lead you to greater clinical understanding or better understanding? • (Follow-up: Examples.) • What do you think your experience in clerkship will be like? • I am going to ask you to forecast the future. I want you to think about the first day. • How do you think you are going to spend the actual day when you are in clerkship? • What have you heard from others about this experience? • Are these typical or unique expectations among your peers? • (Follow-up: Are you anxious about this experience at all?) • (Follow-up: What may you be anxious about?) • What expectations are you looking forward to? • What are the differences between book learning and applying it? • What goals do you have for this experience (clerkship)? • What/who would help you achieve your learning goal of clerkships? • How do you think you will be different after this experience? • (Follow-up: What do you think are differences between yourself and your peers? What characteristics?) • Do you have a vision of how your studying is going to happen? • How do you think you will view the profession differently after this experience? • What knowledge, skills, and attitudes do you think you need to have for your successful learning in clerkships? • What questions/concerns do you have before starting clerkships? • Are these typical or unique concerns among your peers? • C lerkship schedule. • Next interview. • Any other comments? (Appendix continues)
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Appendix 1 (Continued) Midclerkship Interview Guide for Medical Students in Clerkships Categories
Questions or actions
• General questions • Comparing expectations with actual • experiences • • • • • • • Expertise: medical knowledge, • skills, attributes (KSAs) at entry and at present: how changed? • • For 1–2 technical incidents • • Problem solving and tasks/ procedures • • Applying knowledge of medicine • • Management of patients/cases • • Teamwork with coworkers, others, • physician •
Socialization: informal learning and relationship building • For 2–3 social incidents • For each incident, discuss the learning process and learned outcomes related to cognitive, affectual, and social knowledge • Roles of residents, attending, students, and self
ow are the clerkships? H How would you compare your experiences in the clerkships up to this point with what you thought you would experience? What do you find especially interesting/educational? What do you find less interesting/educational? What has been your most memorable patient care experience so far? What has surprised you about the life of a physician so far? What has helped you most with your learning? What has hindered your learning? What qualities of role models do you think are important? I would like to know how you apply your medical knowledge to working in clerkships. Think back about a specific task or activity that you did in clerkships. How have these experiences added to your medical knowledge or book work? Is there any situation that the more you see, that resources are contradicting to what you learned in the previous couple of years? What do you wish you learned before starting the clerkships? What did you learn from this situation? What would you do differently? Are these typical or unique events among your peers? Throughout the PBL curriculum, you were being given opportunities to practice clinical reasoning by working through the PBL learning. How does that experience you had in the first two years compare with the kinds of work you do now when you are actually in the field?
• N ow, I would like to talk about the social/people aspects of your experience. Specifically, I’d like to talk about how you learned the way to work with other people, other departments, and how you learn what others expect of you on the job. • What role have residents played in your work during the clerkships? Are there differences in how you interact with the residents among the clerkships? • What role have attending physicians played in your work during the clerkships? Are there differences in how you interact with attendings among the clerkships? • What role have other medical students played in your work during clerkships? Are there differences in how you interact with other medical students among the clerkships? • Do you feel as though you’re part of the health care team? Or is your role something different from that? • How do you figure out what you’re supposed to do when you get to a new clerkship? • What is your role in your health care team? • How do you get invited in? • How do you know you are doing well? • What kinds of things have you been allowed to do? • Any thought that you would like to do more than you have been allowed to do? • How do you get to know someone better?
Norms Cognitive (knowledge) Behavior (skills)
• E very place has some informal or unwritten rules that you learn by experience. It’s like recognizing that this is the way things are done here. Can you think about a specific situation in which you realized some of these rules? • What was the situation? • Describe what you expected to occur/ought to occur (previous knowledge, mental model). • Describe what actually occurred. • Describe how you handled the experience. • Describe what you learned from that incident. • (Specify: Knowledge, skills, meanings, understandings.) • (Specify: Cognitions in concrete details: range, specificity, depth, personal context.) • Do you think this is a typical/common experience?
Affect (feelings, emotions, moods, motivations)
• D escribe how you felt about that incident. • (Specify: Feelings, emotions, moods, motivations.) • (Specify: Feelings, emotion, mood, motivation in concrete details: range, specificity, depth, personal context.) (Appendix continues)
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Appendix 1 (Continued) Midclerkship Interview Guide for Medical Students in Clerkships Categories
Questions or actions
Social (participation, communication, • Describe how you interacted with others before, during, after incident. cooperation) • (Specify: Participation, communication, and cooperation in concrete details: range, specificity, depth, personal context.) Social exchange (physician, coworkers) Respect, trust, and obligation
• • • • •
escribe your relationship with your residents. D Describe your relationship with your attending physicians. Describe your relationship with nurses or other staff. Describe your relationship with other students. (Probe for indications of respect (engagement in decision making), trust (degree of autonomy and responsibility), and mutual obligations (commitment).)
Understanding of success
• W hat do you think will help you and/or other medical students succeed in clerkships? • What could clerkship programs do to help medical students succeed? • What do you see yourself doing in 3–5 years?
Closing
• A ny other comments? • Advice? For medical students? For school? • Thank you.
Postclerkship Interview Guide for Medical Students Exiting Clerkships Categories
Questions or actions
General questions • Learning outcome • Learning experience Expertise: KSAs at entry and at present: how changed? • For 1–2 technical incidents • Problem solving and tasks/procedures • Applying knowledge of medicine • Management of patients/cases • Teamwork with coworkers, others, physician
• R eflecting on all clerkships that you have had, how would you describe your clerkship learning experience? • What are a few important things you learned? Describe how you learned them.
Socialization: informal learning and relationship building • For 2–3 social incidents • For each incident, discuss the learning process and learned outcomes related to cognitive, affectual, and social knowledge
• H ave you decided on your specialty? If so, how did you decide on this? If not, why are you still undecided? • Did you talk to people about your field of interest (specialty)? What did you learn from them? • How do you feel about being in clinical settings as a physician? Do you envision yourself as part of the health care team? Describe how. • What was helpful to you to become better integrated into the teams during your clerkship experience?
• W hat medical knowledge and skills did you gain through the clerkship experience? • Has your confidence changed regarding the application of your knowledge to clinical problems, patients? • Has your confidence changed regarding your ability to work on a team? • What is the most memorable learning moment? • Could you describe how you applied what you learned the past two years to actual patients/cases? What did you learn about applying your previous medical knowledge to actual patient cases?
Norms Cognitive (knowledge) Behavior (skills)
• W hat kinds of norms or unwritten rules did you learn about in clerkships? What would you advise future third-year students? • Optional question: (Several students mentioned that each physician has different ways, which might affect their evaluation of your performance. What are these differences? How do you feel about that?) • Optional question: (Several students mentioned that they were sometimes reluctant to ask or answer questions. Do you have any similar experiences? Why do you think this happens? How did you feel? Did it change your interactions with others before, during, and after the experience?)
Social exchange (physician, coworkers) Respect, trust, and obligation
• H ow would you describe your relationship with residents, attending physicians, nurses, or other staff after you went through all clerkships? (Respect, trust, responsibility, and commitment?) • How did you get to know the others on the team (residents, nurses, attendings, staff)?
Understanding of success
• W hat do you think will help you and/or other medical students succeed in clerkships? • What could clerkship programs do to help medical students succeed? • What do you see yourself doing in 3–5 years?
Closing
• A ny other comments? • Thank you.
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Learning in the Real Place: Medical Students’ Learning and Socialization in Clerkships at One Medical School Heeyoung Han, PhD, Nicole K. Roberts, PhD, and Russell Korte, PhD
Abstract Purpose To understand medical students’ learning experiences in clerkships: learning expectations (what they expect to learn), learning process (how they learn), and learning outcomes (what they learn). Method Using a longitudinal qualitative research design, the authors followed the experiences of 12 participants across their clerkship year (2011–2012) at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. Interview data from each participant were collected at three points (preclerkship, midclerkship, and postclerkship) and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Additionally, the authors observed participants
Clerkships are the first immersive
learning environments where medical students start transferring their classroom learning to the real world. Students have preclerkship clinical experiences with standardized patients or shadowing, but entering into clerkships is an exciting time for students because it marks the beginning of real-world learning to be a doctor. However, this transition requires them to undergo different learning experiences where they face considerable
through a full clerkship day to augment the interviews. Results Before clerkships, students expected to have more hands-on experiences and become more knowledgeable by translating textbook knowledge to real patients and practicing diagnostic thinking. During clerkships, students experienced ambiguity and subjectivity of attending physicians’ expectations and evaluation criteria. They perceived that impression management was important to ensure that they received learning opportunities and good evaluations. After clerkships, students perceived that their confidence increased in navigating the health care environments and interacting
ambiguity and uncertainty.1,2 During this time students observe the practices, values, and norms of medical professionals in action. In addition, they are expected to “hit the ground running” by participating in low-risk tasks, taking initiative, and engaging in discussion about patient care. Successful adjustment to this real-place learning environment is not predicted by students’ preclinical knowledge and skills.3 Introduction
Dr. Han is assistant professor, Department of Medical Education, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Springfield, Illinois. Dr. Roberts is associate professor, Department of Medical Education, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Springfield, Illinois. Dr. Korte is assistant professor, Organization Learning, Performance, and Change, School of Education, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado. Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Han, Department of Medical Education, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, 913 North Rutledge St., PO Box 19681, Springfield, IL 62794-9681; telephone: (217) 545-8536; fax: (217) 545-0120; e-mail: [email protected]. Acad Med. 2015;90:231–239. First published online October 28, 2014 doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000000544
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Students’ learning in clerkship has been much studied to understand their professional identity formation and socialization.4,5 Boys in White, the classic book on students’ socialization in medicine, depicts how medical students become socialized into the profession and the culture in medical training.6 Several recent studies shed additional light. Krupat and colleagues7 found that students tended to react positively to most clerkship events regardless of whether they were positive or negative. According to their findings, students perceived even negative events such as physicians’ poor behaviors as lessons
with patients, attendings, and residents. However, they felt that there were limited opportunities to practice diagnostic thinking. Students could not clearly discern the decision-making processes used by attending physicians. Although they saw many patients, they perceived that their learning was at the surface level. Conclusions Students’ experiential learning in clerkships occurred through impression management as a function of dynamic social and reciprocal relationships between students and attendings or residents. Students reported that they did not learn comprehensive clinical reasoning skills to the degree they expected in clerkships.
learned, as those clerkship experiences also help them get a better sense of the system. O’Brien and colleagues8 reported that clerkship directors perceived students struggling with applying knowledge to clinical reasoning and engaging in self-directed learning, which students rarely recognized as struggles. Instead, they spent their energies struggling with uncertainty in their roles and responsibilities, expectations on their clinical performance, and the logistics of clinical settings.8 As those two studies indicated, students’ experiences in clerkships are characterized as socialization to get a better sense of the health care system and their roles as future doctors. These studies fit within the socialization literature, which focuses on students’ feelings and experiences in terms of professional identity formation. This avenue of study is less concerned with what students learn or expect to learn while on clerkships. Thus, while students’ experiences in clerkships have been investigated, it is still not clear what students expect to learn, how they learn in clerkships, and what they actually learn. Therefore, the
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purpose of this study was to develop a more holistic understanding of medical students’ learning in clerkships by following students for the entire year of clerkship—specifically focusing on their learning expectations (what they expect to learn), learning process (how they learn), and learning outcomes (what they learn). To investigate these questions, we adopted the concept of legitimate peripheral participation in situated learning as an analytical lens to view students’ learning processes.9 In this view, students as newcomers learn through gradual participation in central tasks to become experienced members. Additionally, students’ social interactional processes of learning become the center of understanding of their learning experience rather than independent learning. Socialization, visualization, and imitation processes within the context of a community of practice help medical students to contextualize and apply the more abstract and decontextualized knowledge learned in previous years. Method
We used a longitudinal qualitative approach as the research design. A longitudinal approach is fundamental to investigate students’ entire experience of the clerkship year. We followed the study participants across their entire clerkship year (2011–2012), which entailed three in-depth interviews and one daylong observation for each participant. Given the students’ significant commitment to this study for one year, we provided the participants with compensation ($100) for their participation. The institutional review board at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine deemed this study exempt. Setting and participants The study setting was at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, which uses a problem-based learning curriculum in the first two years to teach basic sciences and clinical knowledge. Clinical faculty come from a school-based multispecialty practice, a communitybased multispecialty practice, and various family medicine clinics in the area. The school is affiliated with two hospitals. In the third year, students have six clerkship rotations: internal medicine; surgery; psychiatry; pediatric; family and community medicine; and obstetrics–gynecology (OB/GYN). In
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the fourth year, students have additional clerkships including neurology, electives, and residency planning activities. We invited all 78 third-year medical students to participate, and 12 students voluntarily participated in this study. Since two of us have been involved in the curriculum at the school, we were confident that the participants represented the class appropriately in terms of high, mid, and low academic performance. Further, the participants were ethnically diverse, though in the interest of maintaining confidentiality we do not report the ethnicity of the participants. Data collection The interviews were semistructured. We based interview protocols on the research questions and previous studies of the experiences of students transitioning from school to work.10 As seen in Appendix 1, preclerkship interviews investigated students’ prior health professional experiences, learning expectations, and concerns about clerkships. Midclerkship interviews covered four major areas: comparing actual experience with expectations, applying medical knowledge to practice, interpersonal interactions, and learning the norms of practice. Postclerkship interviews elaborated on the previous two interviews and captured the students’ reflections on their experiences in terms of learning outcomes. We conducted preclerkship interviews after the second year and before the first day of clerkships (June–July 2011). Midclerkship interviews were in middle of their third year (November 2011–January 2012); therefore, the students were in various clerkships when they had the midclerkship interview. As the students completed their third year, we invited them to the postclerkship interview (June–July 2012). Generally, interviews were conducted by all three of us. One researcher followed the interview protocol, and the others asked questions to elaborate and probe students’ responses in-depth using the critical incidents technique.11–13 Using this interviewing technique, we asked students to recall a specific incident in which they described their experience in clerkships. For instance, students were asked to recall a specific time when they felt they were included in patient care activities. We recorded and transcribed all interviews for analysis. After each interview, we
discussed new and reoccurring insights from the interview. Through the discussions, we agreed that the data collection was reaching the saturated level as no new information was appearing from the 11th or 12th interviews.14 Additionally, with permission from students and their clerkship at the time of the midclerkship interview, we observed all participants except one student through a full day of their clerkship experience and developed a set of field notes to augment the data sources. One of us followed a student from the start to the end of a clerkship day—for instance, from 6 am to 5 pm. The observations were spread out throughout the clerkship year, from September 2011 to June 2012. All three of us collaboratively completed 11 observations since 1 observation did not happen because of a logistic issue. There was no standardized field note form; we recorded the key activities and interactions, along with contextual details by taking detailed notes. Data analysis We analyzed the transcriptions using grounded theory methods.15,16 Grounded theory is a qualitative research approach that aims to construct a substantive theory from the concepts and themes that emerge from data through an inductive procedure.17,18 This method emphasizes constant comparison of data, which entails testing emerging themes by comparing them with the original data across all interviews.16 With the research questions as a guide, all three of us carefully read the transcripts and attached initial, descriptive codes to statements; retrieved statements having the same descriptive codes and carefully reread the retrieved statements for open coding; and categorized the open codes to identify themes that emerged through a constant comparative process across the data. The coding process started with two calibrating meetings to discuss coding rules and process to enhance interrater agreement in the coding process. In addition, we all coded seven transcripts together. These “calibration” meetings took place throughout the analysis, thus promoting a high level of agreement about how we coded and analyzed the transcripts. Each transcript took approximately two hours to code. Therefore, we spent approximately 14 hours improving our interrater
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agreement. The other 29 transcripts were divided and assigned to each researcher, who coded transcripts independently. We used a qualitative data analysis software, Atlas.ti version 7 (Berlin, Germany: ATLAS.ti GmbH) to help manage the coding and analysis processes. Open coding of all transcripts yielded 2,027 codes, which we analyzed and categorized into themes through density (number of times a code was used in analysis) and groundedness (degree to which the code is related to other codes). We also used the field notes to check the results during the constant comparative data analysis. In this way, the field notes were used as a way to triangulate the data analysis and interpretation of findings. Results
Of 78 eligible students, 12 voluntarily participated in this study. Seven students were female. Each participant completed all three interviews. Eleven observations were conducted since one observation did not happen because of a logistic issue. Table 1 summarizes our findings related to the research questions, including illustrative comments from students’ interviews. Learning expectations (preclerkship) Before students started their clerkship rotations, they were generally excited to learn in real-world settings, yet they seldom came up with specific learning expectations. In fact, most students wondered if they should have learning expectations. Participants generally seemed to feel that they would be passive recipients of an already-created curriculum. With more in-depth probing questions, they came up with what they would like to learn in clerkships and how they envisioned the clerkship learning. Below are several themes that emerged from our analyses of their preclerkship interviews. Hands-on experiences. The students wanted to have hands-on experiences throughout their clerkship experiences. All participating students had had some prior health care experience including shadowing, volunteering in health care settings, medical mission trips, or social work prior to becoming a medical student. Some of them had family members who were doctors. They were familiar with the health care
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profession and environments at some level. Therefore, they believed that simple shadowing would be neither exciting nor helpful for their clerkship learning. While they understood that some level of shadowing and observation would occur, they expected to learn through actual hands-on experiences. Realistic learning to become a real doctor. Students expected their clerkship experiences to provide realistic learning. Students were excited about clerkships because they expected to be in real settings with real doctors. The students expected to learn by seeing real patients and being in real clinical settings. They had previously been in clinical settings through their shadowing or volunteering works before becoming a medical student; however, at that time their experience of being in a clinical setting was not necessarily as a doctor-intraining. During clerkships, they expected a more solid and professional role. They were no longer going to be “shadows” at the margins of the activity, but expected to be part of the care team. Anticipation of being an insider, of learning the inner workings of the hospitals and clinics, excited students as they looked forward to their clerkships. Textbook learning translated into realworld practice. The students expected their clerkship experiences to allow them to translate their book knowledge into actual clinical practice. The students wanted to see how diseases appeared in real patient cases. They acknowledged that there probably is a discrepancy between textbook learning and real-world practice. For example, they were told that a drug that they learned about in class would not be used in the clinical setting. The students wanted to learn what drugs physicians actually use and how diseases are treated in practice. Whereas they recently completed learning about diseases and health care more abstractly through textbooks and classroom learning, in clerkships they expected to learn more about how this knowledge was applied in practice. Being more knowledgeable. Students envisioned themselves becoming more knowledgeable through the opportunities to practice their clinical reasoning by applying their knowledge to real patient cases. Students wanted to have the
opportunities to think through actual patient cases and arrive at diagnoses just like practicing doctors do. Deciding on a specialty. Given that all the students had prior health care experiences, some of them had an overall idea regarding what specialty they would pursue. However, they were still open to changing their minds because they had not been exposed to all specialties. They expected to learn more about a variety of specialties so that they could make a more informed choice about their careers. Learning process (midclerkship) With great excitement, students started their clerkship rotations. Some students started long clerkships (10 weeks) including surgery and internal medicine while the other students started short clerkships (6 weeks) including pediatrics, OB/GYN, psychiatry, and family community medicine. Below are students’ experiences gathered midway through their clerkships in relation to how they learn. Navigating environments. Students reported that during the clerkship they learned to navigate different clinical and social/professional environments. Students experienced a higher level of uncertainty and ambiguity in the hospitals and clinics than they expected, and therefore they often reported spending time figuring out what to do, how to do it, where to be, and why things were done the way they were. They found that the attendings created their learning environments. Different attendings had different styles of teaching, expectations, and evaluation criteria. These idiosyncrasies made the students’ learning processes highly uncertain and ambiguous. Many also believed that these idiosyncrasies made their evaluations more subjective than they expected. Therefore, it was a crucial process for students to figure out each attending physician’s expectations and preferences. Moreover, because students were assigned to different attendings almost every week in a clerkship, the navigation associated with determining expectations was a constant activity in their learning processes. Learning by doing through impression management. As they expected, students learned by doing. Typically, they were
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Table 1 Themes of Clerkship Learning Expectations, Learning Process, and Learning Outcomes, From a Qualitative Study of 12 Medical Students’ Learning Experiences and Socialization in Clerkships, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, 2011–2012 Research questions and themes
Illustrative quotations
Learning expectations Hands-on experiences I assume that it’ll be some combination of hopefully they follow the see one, do one, and teach one, because I think that students just learn better that way. I’m hoping it’s not exactly like a straight shadowing experience. [participant #9, female] Realistic learning to become a real doctor
I’m really excited for clerkships, because I feel like it’ll be a very realistic learning about what—how to be a doctor, what medicine entails, how to interact with patients and what those really vital pieces of information are that help you practice. [participant #8, female]
Textbook learning translated into realworld practice
I think this is going to be more patient care and being able to identify diseases and learn about treatment when it comes to dealing with real patients. I think that there’s a difference between learning about something in a textbook. It is about seeing an actual patient and learning how to identify the disease process in real life. What that looks like and how you’re supposed to treat that. And that’s what I’m expecting clerkship is going to be like, but I actually don’t really know. [participant #7, female]
Being more knowledgeable
I think I’ll be better at thinking through clinical situations. Just starting basically from scratch or with limited information and working through a patient’s case and knowing what to ask next. What physical exam to do next. And ultimately, what lab exams to do and how to use those things to the most efficiently, work to a diagnosis. [participant #2, male]
Deciding on a specialty
One year from now I expect to know 100%. I expect the next 12 months to be the time where I would really, really consider different things and come to a decision. [participant #2, male]
Learning process Navigating environments
It was really important right away to kind of figure out what’s expected of you. When you start on inpatient or outpatient, depending on who is it you’re with—if you’re with a clinician, if you’re with a resident. Just kind of figure out and ask what do you want me to do? What’s kind of my role? ‘Cause everything’s a little different whether you’re on psychiatry, whether you’re on the labor delivery floor, and what’s expected of me while I’m here. And just doing that right away smoothes the whole time you’re going to be there out. [participant #10, male]
Learning by doing through impression management
What I noticed was the people who I think put in the most time and showed interest, not only with actively listening, asking relevant questions, being knowledgeable, and prepared, for questions. I think those were the people who showed trust. [participant #3, male] I just figured the more that you show you’re willing to try something, or learn something, the more responsibility you’re given by the attendings I think. [participant #12, male] You kind of gather that one of the common questions is what do you want to do? Some people have a hard time answering that. I wanted to do family medicine. So luckily I had interest in everything. But I think sometimes people are worried that, whenever they’re on pediatrics and they say they want to do psych. The pediatric residents really won’t take an interest, because this isn’t really relevant to what they want to do. So I think that’s one way that the trust develops is that, oh, you’re interested in what I like and what I’m doing. And so that you’ll be interested in that. And then there’s also people who even if they want to do something [else], they’re still interested in learning what they’re there for. But the people who for whatever reason show that they don’t want to be there, then there’s very little trust there. And it’s just kind of very minimal learning opportunities. [participant #3, male]
Balancing between clinical work and studying
It’s a hard balance between clinical duties and then actual building in study time to study for yourself and for the written examination. I think throughout the course of the clerkships, that was the biggest challenge. You wanted to do well as far as being supportive for the team and being there, and patient care. But the end of the day, there was always time where you need to go back and study the basics in clinical science for yourself. Because at the end of the day there’s going to be a Shelf exam at the end of the clerkship. You can’t get around that. So I think that the hardest balance was that. And then, you would learn things from working with the team too, so. It was just a hard balance of how much time do I need to be here doing clinical stuff and how much time should I be at home studying. [participant #10, male]
Learning outcomes Confidence increased in interactions and environmental management
Well, I think I’ve always felt pretty comfortable working with other people. But it’s my confidence level working as a medical student has changed. [participant #3, male]
Limited opportunities to practice diagnostic thinking
In obstetrics, for example, the focus is on getting this baby out healthy. So the focus isn’t necessarily on the problem or the diagnostic process and the way to think about things. So in some ways I’d say in like OB, for example, the way they teach students, or the way I think they do teach students more in the way to think through different clinical situations and problems, and like differential diagnosis lists. Those come through like the didactic sessions and the lectures. [subject #2, male] I feel like third year’s a good introduction into all the things that we need to be exposed to have, at least seen some aspects of medicine. But not necessarily have in-depth knowledge or be able to speak competently about tons of things. But just to be able to say, oh, I’ve seen that or be aware of the terminology at least, so that we all have a similar background. [participant #11, female]
Decision about specialty
I originally wanted to do neurosurgery once I went through that. I thought that was great. I liked all the procedures. And I liked kind of the science behind it. So that was my plan that I was working with. And then I started this clerkship my first two weeks were interventional cardiology. And he would have me, allow me to do the procedures, the catheterization and all that. And after a few of those start to realize that you can actually do it and maybe not risking, missing the artery quite so much as the first time. That was pretty fun. I felt like I had a hold on that. So that actually changed my focus in what I wanted to do. [participant #2, male]
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assigned patients to see in every rotation. By seeing patients or being allowed to do simple procedural tasks, students felt that they were recognized and invited to be part of the health care team. There were also moments where students took initiative to do things because invitations were sometimes unclear or not explicit. Students reported that an important part of their learning process required them to manage impressions. Students realized that how they were perceived by others (especially first impressions) directly affected their learning opportunities. One of the useful tips shared among students included the various preferences of different attendings, to which they needed to adapt. Students also realized that asking questions was an important way to demonstrate that they were interested, smart, and prepared for whatever the attending would ask them to do. However, students believed that asking a question perceived as “stupid” or demonstrating little knowledge or interest was perilous to their success because attendings would perceive them as neither smart nor prepared for some clinical work, which would affect subsequent evaluations. When asked a question, students felt that they needed to answer the question. Otherwise, they would create a poor impression. If seen in a positive way, students felt that attendings would trust and invite them to practice and allow them to be more involved in the patient care process. Students felt that they were being evaluated all the time and that, by managing impressions, students could receive better evaluations and earn more experiential learning opportunities. Students’ awareness of impression management also governed their learning relationships when on a rotation in a specialty that did not interest them. On these clerkships, students had to balance the energy needed to appear to be interested with the energy they needed to study for board examinations and topics of more interest to them. Balancing between clinical work and studying. Students felt that they needed to be better at time management. They found that it is not easy to be present on the floor and still find time to study for the shelf examinations that culminated the clerkship. Students spoke of carrying review materials with them so that
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they could study during downtime. An important task was to find an appropriate place to study in each rotation where they could still be seen as available and not accused of “disappearing” and thus forced to the sidelines or assigned tasks of little importance. Some clerkships were structured to allow for time to study. In psychiatry, for example, students had relatively short days in hospitals and clinics. Students were relieved to have time allocated for studying because this was an important part of the program. Learning outcomes (postclerkship) After they finished their six clerkships, we asked participating students what they felt they had learned, if their confidence changed, and if so, in what ways. Further, the questions targeted their initial learning expectations to see if their expectations were met. Below are several themes that emerged from the postclerkship interviews. Confidence increased in interactions. Students reported that their overall confidence increased after the clerkship experiences. Specifically, students described far more confidence in interacting with patients, residents, attendings, and staff in hospitals and clinics than they had before their clerkships. They also felt more comfortable conducting real patient encounters. They felt that they had learned to manage their relationships with residents, attendings, and staff effectively. Further, they felt more comfortable with navigating the health care environment having developed a better understanding of how things work in hospitals and clinics, including a greater awareness of the norms that guide behaviors and work processes. Limited opportunities to practice diagnostic thinking. Whereas students had expected to become more skilled at applying medical knowledge to clinical work and coming up with differential diagnoses and plans for patient cases, they perceived that there were far too few opportunities for them to practice or observe comprehensive diagnostic thinking. Students could come up with their own diagnoses as they saw patients; however, their hypotheses and diagnostic thinking were neither heard nor coached by attendings or residents on a regular basis. Students perceived that their knowledge was still rather
superficial. Students felt comfortable with simple cases yet not very confident in reasoning through the complex cases they encountered. In the hospital setting, diagnoses and plans were often decided even before students saw the patients. For example, the surgical decision-making process was not easily visible to clerkship students because they were not necessarily in the clinic with the surgeon on the day the decision to operate was made. Students reported that learning diagnostic thinking did not happen as much as they hoped because of attendings’ busy work schedules and students’ limited responsibility in patient care. Decisions about specialty. Prior to the clerkship experiences, most participating students had some ideas regarding what specialty they would be interested in based on their prior experiences. After the clerkship year, students came to a better understanding about what specialty they would pursue. Several students described a type of “decision tree” to explain how they decided on their specialties. For example: “Do you like procedures? If yes, then Surgery or OB. If you like babies, OB. If not, some aspect of Surgery. If you don’t like procedures, do you like variety? If yes, then Family Medicine. Do you like puzzles and thinking? If yes, then Internal Medicine.” Students also found that having a good relationship with an attending who drew them into the practice was helpful in guiding their choice on a specialty. Discussion
On the basis of longitudinal interviews with 12 medical students across a year of clerkships, we found that participants’ learning in clerkships occurs within the context of dynamic social and reciprocal relationships between students and attendings or residents. Students earn learning opportunities through building trust, which is achieved through impression management. Impression management is an important yet unwritten norm in clerkships because attendings’ evaluation and teaching style are characterized by ambiguity and subjectivity.19,20 It is the learner’s responsibility to determine, on a personby-person, place-by-place basis, what the parameters of acceptable performance are. Beagan21 found that medical students learn to not challenge clinicians, further
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suggesting that if students do not appear to be compliant they will have poor evaluations, which will affect their future careers. Consistent with Beagan’s findings,21 we found that the process of impression management explains the dynamic, reciprocal relationships enacted between students and attendings.22,23 When students represent themselves in positive ways (i.e., impression management), teachers including attendings and residents are more inclined to trust them, teach more, and evaluate them positively. A recent study reported that students had higher expectations of their own skill development than clinical faculty had.24 This finding may be related to students’ desire to impress faculty so that they “earn” learning opportunities. A surprising finding of this study is that there exists a gap between students’ learning expectations and their actual learning experience in terms of learning clinical reasoning in clerkships. Being able to think through a patient case using medical knowledge to come up with a differential diagnosis, assessment, and plan is one of the core objectives of medical training. One of the overall objectives for the third-year clerkship curriculum in general is to prioritize patients’ problems, formulate appropriate differential diagnoses, and develop plans for diagnosis and management. However, most of our participating students reported that they did not learn clinical reasoning skills as expected in the clerkship environment. Expert physicians’ diagnostic thinking was not easily visible to students during clinical work in hospitals and clinics. Students reported few opportunities to practice comprehensive diagnostic thinking in their clerkships. Audétat and colleagues25 recently reported that clinical educators themselves had little training in clinical reasoning and perceived their role as role modeling rather than systematic teaching to developing clinical reasoning. The literature indicates that it is the learners’ responsibility to assimilate the experts’ clinical reasoning skills. However, as our findings support, the role modeling for clinical reasoning is marginally effective and not visible to medical students in clerkships. This gap between expectations and actual outcomes of clerkship learning regarding clinical reasoning is surprising, yet it has been documented previously. Williams and colleagues26 reported that the clinical reasoning ability of students from five
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medical schools did not increase during third-year clerkships despite significant improvement in years one and two. As Prince and colleagues27 found, one may argue that students have difficulty in applying medical knowledge to real clinical practice because they do not have sufficient basic science knowledge. However, it is also reasonable to assume that medical students come to the third-year clerkships with an expectation to develop clinical reasoning skills and knowledge through guided practices and applications to clinical practice in real health care places. They expected to engage in legitimate peripheral participation, with their skills and abilities honed through the mentoring and coaching of experts. However, both the prior literature and our findings indicate that this expectation is not met in clerkships. This study has two limitations. First, the study setting included only one medical school. Schools with different clerkship curricula or with a different student population may have different findings. Second, student participation was voluntary; therefore, the group may not represent the entire student population. However, the students who volunteered represented a wide range of achievement and were ethnically diverse. Further studies are warranted to discern the barriers that prevent students from learning diagnostic thinking within the clerkship environment. While it is of pressing concern to clerkship directors and medical school faculty, the sources of the problem are likely multiple.8,25 For instance, there may be little focused time for teaching diagnosis and planning, or little direct contact between learner and teacher in environments where the expert can model his or her approach, and little time to allow the learner to practice with guidance. Given that coming up with diagnoses and plans is the real job of a physician and the objective of medical training, it is imperative to determine the environmental, professional, and social barriers to the modeling and explicit teaching that would convey these skills. Further, it will be important to assess to what degree the ambiguity and constant change (environment and teacher) interfere with students’ learning. Acknowledgments: The authors are grateful to the students for their time and thoughtful contributions to this study. The authors also thank the clerkship directors, physicians, residents, staff, and others that allowed the observation of their work.
Funding/Support: Funding for the student stipend was provided by the Department of Medical Education at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine (SIU SOM). Other disclosures: None reported. Ethical approval: This study was reviewed and deemed exempt by the institutional review board at SIU SOM. Previous presentations: Elements of this study were presented at the Association of American Medical Colleges annual meeting, November 5, 2012, San Francisco, California; and the Central Group on Educational Affairs meeting, March 23, 2013, Cincinnati, Ohio.
References 1 Teunissen PW, Westerman M. Opportunity or threat: The ambiguity of the consequences of transitions in medical education. Med Educ. 2011;45:51–59. 2 Lester H, Radcliffe C. Perceived stress during undergraduate medical training: A qualitative study. Med Educ. 2003;37:32–38. 3 van Hell EA, Kuks JB, Schönrock-Adema J, van Lohuizen MT, Cohen-Schotanus J. Transition to clinical training: Influence of pre-clinical knowledge and skills, and consequences for clinical performance. Med Educ. 2008;42:830–837. 4 Weaver R, Peters K, Koch J, Wilson I. “Part of the team”: Professional identity and social exclusivity in medical students. Med Educ. 2011;45:1220–1229. 5 Lindberg O. Undergraduate socialization in medical education: Ideals of professional physicians’ practice. Learn Health Soc Care. 2009;8:241–249. 6 Becker HS, Geer B, Hughs EC, et al. Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press; 1961. 7 Krupat E, Pelletier SR, Chernicky DW. The third year in the first person: Medical students report on their principal clinical year. Acad Med. 2011;86:90–97. 8 O’Brien B, Cooke M, Irby DM. Perceptions and attributions of third-year student struggles in clerkships: Do students and clerkship directors agree? Acad Med. 2007;82:970–978. 9 Lave J, Wenger E. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; 1991. 10 Korte RF. How newcomers learn the social norms of an organization: A case study of the socialization of newly hired engineers. Hum Resour Dev Q. 2009;20:285–306. 11 Ellinger AD, Watkins KE. Updating the critical incident technique after forty-four years. In: Torraco RJ, ed. Academy of Human Resource Development 1998 Conference Proceedings. Oakbrook, Ill: Academy of Human Resource Development; 1998. 12 Flanagan JC. The critical incident technique. Psychol Bull. 1954;51:327–358. 13 Gremler DD. The critical incident technique in service research. J Serv Res. 2004;7:65–89. 14 Hanson JL, Balmer DF, Giardino AP. Qualitative research methods for medical educators. Acad Pediatr. 2011;11:375–386. 15 Miles MB, Huberman AM. Qualitative Data Analysis. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage; 1994.
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Research Report 16 Strauss A, Corbin J. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage; 1998. 17 Patton MQ. Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage; 2002. 18 Merriam SB. Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation. San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass; 2009. 19 Alexander EK, Osman NY, Walling JL, Mitchell VG. Variation and imprecision of clerkship grading in U.S. medical schools. Acad Med. 2012;87:1070–1076. 20 Fazio SB, Papp KK, Torre DM, Defer TM. Grade inflation in the internal medicine
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clerkship: A national survey. Teach Learn Med. 2013;25:71–76. Beagan BL. “Even if I don’t know what I’m doing I can make it look like I know what I’m doing”: Becoming a doctor in the 1990s. Can Rev Sociol Anthropol. 2001;38:275–292. Blau PM. Exchange and Power in Social Life. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books; 1986. Cropanzano R, Mitchell MS. Social exchange theory: An interdisciplinary review. J Manage. 2005;31:874–900. Wenrich M, Jackson MB, Scherpbier AJ, et al. Ready or not? Expectations of faculty and medical students for clinical skills preparation for clerkships. Med Educ Online.
2010;15. http://med-ed-online.net/index. php/meo/article/download/5295/pdf_19. Accessed October 15, 2014. 25 Audétat MC, Dory V, Nendaz M, et al. What is so difficult about managing clinical reasoning difficulties? Med Educ. 2012;46:216–227. 26 Williams RG, Klamen DL, White CB, et al. Tracking development of clinical reasoning ability across five medical schools using a progress test. Acad Med. 2011;86: 1148–1154. 27 Prince KJ, Boshuizen HP, van der Vleuten CP, Scherpbier AJ. Students’ opinions about their preparation for clinical practice. Med Educ. 2005;39:704–712.
Appendix 1 Interview Protocols, From a Qualitative Study of 12 Medical Students’ Learning Experiences and Socialization in Clerkships, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, 2011–2012 Preclerkship Interview Guide for Medical Students Entering Clerkships Categories
Questions or actions
Introduction and overview of study
• • • •
Learning expectations • Learning goals • Learning process to achieve the learning goals • Knowledge, skills, and attributes for successful learning in clerkships
Closing
Introductory remarks. State the purpose of the study. Consent process and form: Anonymity of data (explain how anonymity will be guarded). Introduction of the research team: I am with ______ University and we are interested in understanding education and clerkship experience for medical students. • Provide consent form and explain consent process, answer questions, ask for consent (interview and recording). Icebreaking questions: • I want to focus our discussion today on your learning expectations and goals of clerkships. I might ask questions in different ways and even get really detailed because this is the data I need to do a good study. The more detail the better. • What kind of health professional experience did you have before? • Based on what you have learned so far, what do you expect to learn (more) during third-year clerkships? • What kinds of experiences do you expect you will have that will lead you to greater clinical understanding or better understanding? • (Follow-up: Examples.) • What do you think your experience in clerkship will be like? • I am going to ask you to forecast the future. I want you to think about the first day. • How do you think you are going to spend the actual day when you are in clerkship? • What have you heard from others about this experience? • Are these typical or unique expectations among your peers? • (Follow-up: Are you anxious about this experience at all?) • (Follow-up: What may you be anxious about?) • What expectations are you looking forward to? • What are the differences between book learning and applying it? • What goals do you have for this experience (clerkship)? • What/who would help you achieve your learning goal of clerkships? • How do you think you will be different after this experience? • (Follow-up: What do you think are differences between yourself and your peers? What characteristics?) • Do you have a vision of how your studying is going to happen? • How do you think you will view the profession differently after this experience? • What knowledge, skills, and attitudes do you think you need to have for your successful learning in clerkships? • What questions/concerns do you have before starting clerkships? • Are these typical or unique concerns among your peers? • C lerkship schedule. • Next interview. • Any other comments? (Appendix continues)
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Appendix 1 (Continued) Midclerkship Interview Guide for Medical Students in Clerkships Categories
Questions or actions
• General questions • Comparing expectations with actual • experiences • • • • • • • Expertise: medical knowledge, • skills, attributes (KSAs) at entry and at present: how changed? • • For 1–2 technical incidents • • Problem solving and tasks/ procedures • • Applying knowledge of medicine • • Management of patients/cases • • Teamwork with coworkers, others, • physician •
Socialization: informal learning and relationship building • For 2–3 social incidents • For each incident, discuss the learning process and learned outcomes related to cognitive, affectual, and social knowledge • Roles of residents, attending, students, and self
ow are the clerkships? H How would you compare your experiences in the clerkships up to this point with what you thought you would experience? What do you find especially interesting/educational? What do you find less interesting/educational? What has been your most memorable patient care experience so far? What has surprised you about the life of a physician so far? What has helped you most with your learning? What has hindered your learning? What qualities of role models do you think are important? I would like to know how you apply your medical knowledge to working in clerkships. Think back about a specific task or activity that you did in clerkships. How have these experiences added to your medical knowledge or book work? Is there any situation that the more you see, that resources are contradicting to what you learned in the previous couple of years? What do you wish you learned before starting the clerkships? What did you learn from this situation? What would you do differently? Are these typical or unique events among your peers? Throughout the PBL curriculum, you were being given opportunities to practice clinical reasoning by working through the PBL learning. How does that experience you had in the first two years compare with the kinds of work you do now when you are actually in the field?
• N ow, I would like to talk about the social/people aspects of your experience. Specifically, I’d like to talk about how you learned the way to work with other people, other departments, and how you learn what others expect of you on the job. • What role have residents played in your work during the clerkships? Are there differences in how you interact with the residents among the clerkships? • What role have attending physicians played in your work during the clerkships? Are there differences in how you interact with attendings among the clerkships? • What role have other medical students played in your work during clerkships? Are there differences in how you interact with other medical students among the clerkships? • Do you feel as though you’re part of the health care team? Or is your role something different from that? • How do you figure out what you’re supposed to do when you get to a new clerkship? • What is your role in your health care team? • How do you get invited in? • How do you know you are doing well? • What kinds of things have you been allowed to do? • Any thought that you would like to do more than you have been allowed to do? • How do you get to know someone better?
Norms Cognitive (knowledge) Behavior (skills)
• E very place has some informal or unwritten rules that you learn by experience. It’s like recognizing that this is the way things are done here. Can you think about a specific situation in which you realized some of these rules? • What was the situation? • Describe what you expected to occur/ought to occur (previous knowledge, mental model). • Describe what actually occurred. • Describe how you handled the experience. • Describe what you learned from that incident. • (Specify: Knowledge, skills, meanings, understandings.) • (Specify: Cognitions in concrete details: range, specificity, depth, personal context.) • Do you think this is a typical/common experience?
Affect (feelings, emotions, moods, motivations)
• D escribe how you felt about that incident. • (Specify: Feelings, emotions, moods, motivations.) • (Specify: Feelings, emotion, mood, motivation in concrete details: range, specificity, depth, personal context.) (Appendix continues)
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Appendix 1 (Continued) Midclerkship Interview Guide for Medical Students in Clerkships Categories
Questions or actions
Social (participation, communication, • Describe how you interacted with others before, during, after incident. cooperation) • (Specify: Participation, communication, and cooperation in concrete details: range, specificity, depth, personal context.) Social exchange (physician, coworkers) Respect, trust, and obligation
• • • • •
escribe your relationship with your residents. D Describe your relationship with your attending physicians. Describe your relationship with nurses or other staff. Describe your relationship with other students. (Probe for indications of respect (engagement in decision making), trust (degree of autonomy and responsibility), and mutual obligations (commitment).)
Understanding of success
• W hat do you think will help you and/or other medical students succeed in clerkships? • What could clerkship programs do to help medical students succeed? • What do you see yourself doing in 3–5 years?
Closing
• A ny other comments? • Advice? For medical students? For school? • Thank you.
Postclerkship Interview Guide for Medical Students Exiting Clerkships Categories
Questions or actions
General questions • Learning outcome • Learning experience Expertise: KSAs at entry and at present: how changed? • For 1–2 technical incidents • Problem solving and tasks/procedures • Applying knowledge of medicine • Management of patients/cases • Teamwork with coworkers, others, physician
• R eflecting on all clerkships that you have had, how would you describe your clerkship learning experience? • What are a few important things you learned? Describe how you learned them.
Socialization: informal learning and relationship building • For 2–3 social incidents • For each incident, discuss the learning process and learned outcomes related to cognitive, affectual, and social knowledge
• H ave you decided on your specialty? If so, how did you decide on this? If not, why are you still undecided? • Did you talk to people about your field of interest (specialty)? What did you learn from them? • How do you feel about being in clinical settings as a physician? Do you envision yourself as part of the health care team? Describe how. • What was helpful to you to become better integrated into the teams during your clerkship experience?
• W hat medical knowledge and skills did you gain through the clerkship experience? • Has your confidence changed regarding the application of your knowledge to clinical problems, patients? • Has your confidence changed regarding your ability to work on a team? • What is the most memorable learning moment? • Could you describe how you applied what you learned the past two years to actual patients/cases? What did you learn about applying your previous medical knowledge to actual patient cases?
Norms Cognitive (knowledge) Behavior (skills)
• W hat kinds of norms or unwritten rules did you learn about in clerkships? What would you advise future third-year students? • Optional question: (Several students mentioned that each physician has different ways, which might affect their evaluation of your performance. What are these differences? How do you feel about that?) • Optional question: (Several students mentioned that they were sometimes reluctant to ask or answer questions. Do you have any similar experiences? Why do you think this happens? How did you feel? Did it change your interactions with others before, during, and after the experience?)
Social exchange (physician, coworkers) Respect, trust, and obligation
• H ow would you describe your relationship with residents, attending physicians, nurses, or other staff after you went through all clerkships? (Respect, trust, responsibility, and commitment?) • How did you get to know the others on the team (residents, nurses, attendings, staff)?
Understanding of success
• W hat do you think will help you and/or other medical students succeed in clerkships? • What could clerkship programs do to help medical students succeed? • What do you see yourself doing in 3–5 years?
Closing
• A ny other comments? • Thank you.
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