Medical students reflections on first clinical experience (original) (raw)

The anxieties of medical students related to clinical training

International Journal of Clinical Practice, 2006

Reflection is an important skill, as it supports both individual and lifelong learning. It can be used as a learning method in medical education for professional development at all stages. This study aims to evaluate reflective skills of third-year medical students in primary care experience. Physicians from affiliated primary health care centers supervised students during their clinical practice. Student reports was the main documents to assess learning experiences during that period. Researchers used narrative reflection in the students' reports for content analysis. Reports entries were categorized as avoidant or scant reporting, objective reporting, committed reflectors and reflectors with emotional exploration and coded accordingly. Self-learning experiences of students resulted in various levels of reflection. Students who have committed reflection and reflection with emotional exploration presented detailed and contextual information about their performances and self-learning outcomes. Some students who are categorized as objective reporters wrote simply about daily events and interactions as their learning experiences. Reflective practice provides some information about learning experiences of medical students and reflections on self-learning of primary care experience.

The enhancement of medical student performance through narrative reflective practice: a pilot project

Canadian medical education journal, 2013

Narrative Reflective Practice (NRP) is a process that helps medical students become better listeners and physicians. We hypothesized that NRP would enhance students' performance on multiple-choice question exams (MCQs), on objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs), and on subjective clinical evaluations (SCEs). The MCQs, OSCEs and SCEs test scores from 139 third year University of Alberta medical students from the same class doing their Internal Medicine rotation were collected over a 12 month period. All preceptors followed the same one-hour clinical teaching format, except for the single preceptor who incorporated 2 weeks of NRP in the usual clinical teaching of 16 students. The testing was done at the end of each 8-week rotation, and all students within each cohort received the same MCQs, OSCE and SCEs. Independent t-tests were used to assess group differences in the mean MCQ, OSCE and SCE scores. The group receiving NRP training scored 4.7% higher on the MCQ compone...

Medical students using the technique of 55-word stories to reflect on a 6-week rotation during the integrated primary care block

African Journal of Health Professions Education, 2021

In recent years, there has been increasing interest for most medical education programmes to encourage reflection as a required competency. Programmes in higher education use student reflections as a measure to evaluate programmatic success. [1] The literature defines reflective learning as a mode of internally enquiring and questioning an issue of concern, caused by an experience. [2] This concern, which relates to the experience, creates and clarifies meaning for the student to learn from, which then translates into changes in their perspective. Reflective practice also helps to facilitate insights that might otherwise be missed. There is consensus among researchers that reflective practice must be demonstrated in observation of professional practice by students; similarly, in the education of students. [3,4] Moon [5] lists many reasons for the practice of using journals and reflection as part of learning, such as fostering reflective and creative interaction; increasing active involvement in learning; and personal ownership of learning. She argues that enabling learners to understand their own learning process through reflection can be effective in aiding and reinforcing learning. Daudelin [6] suggests that reflection allows the opportunity for students to take a step back from an experience to ponder, carefully and persistently, its meaning to the self through the development of inferences. This would suggest that learning is the creation of meaning from past or current events and can serve as a guide to future behaviour. These two important conditions for learning from experience, i.e. self-reflection and meaning-making, facilitate the formation of insights from past events and the application of these insights to future actions. [6] The Graduate Entry Medical Programme (GEMP) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa (SA) was introduced in 2003 as a 4-year training medical programme that complements the traditional approach, leading to the completion of the MB BCh degree. Through this programme, students are exposed to aspects of community-based healthcare practice, including providing them with clinical skills necessary to function optimally in rural and urban community settings. The integrated primary care (IPC) block is a 6-week preceptorship in either a rural or urban primary healthcare centre, which may take place in a variety of settings, such as a healthcare centre or a clinic or district hospital, based in Gauteng or North West province. [3] As part of the IPC block, final-year medical students were asked to write short reflective stories of no more than 55 words on experiences that had the greatest impact at the end of each of week, until week 5 of their 6-weekly placement. To date, students continue to reflect using this tool for the block. Fifty-five-word stories make use of creative Background. Reflection and reflective practice are identified as a core competency for graduates in health professions education. Students are expected to be in a position to process experiences in a variety of ways through reflective learning. In doing so, they can explore the understanding of their actions and experiences, and the impact of these on themselves and others. Objectives. To draw on 5-weekly reflections by final-year medical students during the integrated primary care block placement. These reflections explore the learning that occurred during the rotation and the change in experiences during this period, and illustrate the use of reflection as a tool to support the development of professional practice. Methods. This descriptive qualitative study analysed students' 55-word reflective stories during a 6-week preceptorship in either a rural or urban primary healthcare centre. The writing technique of short 55-word reflective stories was used to record student experiences. Inductive thematic analysis was conducted using MAXQDA software. This involved identifying the most commonly used words for each week through a word cloud, highlighting each week's most notable focus for learning to generate themes and sub-themes. Results. Analysis of 127 logbook entries generated 464 stories on a range of experiences that had a significant impact on learning. Students' reflections in the first 2 weeks were linked to personal experiences and views about the block. In subsequent weeks, reflections focused on the individual responses of students to the learning experiences regarding the curriculum, patient care, ethics, professionalism and the health system. Conclusions. The reflections highlighted the key learning experiences of the medical students and illustrated how meaning is constructed from these experiences. The 55-word stories as a reflection tool have potential to support reflection for students, and provide valuable insight into medical students' learning journey during their clinical training.

Reflective Learning Experience in Primary Care Medicine Posting: A Potential Qualitative Study

Journal of Advances in Medicine and Medical Research

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of reflection on learning during family medicine posting, to introduce a reflective writing exercise into an undergraduate medical curriculum, including their levels of satisfaction and their concerns. Methods: We used the secondary data taken from the final year medical students' feedback records during their one-week family medicine posting. The total number of 148 students' reflective writings were collected. Among them, 52 students' data (35% of total participants) who provided the full answers were included in the analysis. Qualitative analysis was done using RQDA (Free qualitative data analysis) software. Data were entered first in the notes and transferred to RQDA software as files. Codes and code categories were formed by using both pre-set code and Original Research Article

Reflective practice as a method of learning in medical education: history and review of literature

International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, 2017

Modern medical education and profession needs innovative methods to improve learning among the students. Reflective practice is one of the time-tested tool to improve students’ learning following a teaching encounter. Reflective practice is an analytical practice in which an individual adds a personal reflection about the action, incident, situation or thought. Purpose of this article is to review the literature to find out history, various models, genesis and application of reflective practice in medical education. Through the present paper, attempt has been made to focus on role of reflective practice in present medical education and profession.

A reflective practice intervention for professional development, reduced stress and improved patient care—A qualitative developmental evaluation

Patient Education and Counseling, 2013

Objective: Professional capabilities, such as empathy and patient-centeredness, decline during medical education. Reflective practice is advocated for teaching these capabilities. The Clinical Reflection Training (CRT) is a reflective practice intervention using the professional dilemmas faced by medical students during clinical practice. The aim of this study was to evaluate students' perceptions of the helpfulness of the CRT and its effects on their medical education. Methods: Eighteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with medical students who had participated in the CRT. Content analysis was used to analyze the interview data. Results: Medical students did not feel adequately prepared to manage the difficult personal and interpersonal problems frequently encountered in clinical practice. They reported that the CRT reduces stress, improves patient care and serves as a tool for professional development. Conclusion: The CRT may be a useful tool for developing professionalism during medical education, reducing stress and enhancing the quality of patient care. Practice implications: Providing students with reflective practice training that draws on their current personal clinical problems in order to improve their clinical work may be a productive investment in personal professional development, physician health, and quality improvement. ß Please cite this article in press as: Lutz G, et al. A reflective practice intervention for professional development, reduced stress and improved patient care-A qualitative developmental evaluation. Patient Educ Couns (2013), http://dx.

Medical Education Reflective writing by final year medical students: Lessons for curricular change

Reflective writing by final year medical students: Lessons for curricular change ALKA GANESH, GAYATRI GANESH ABSTRACT Backgound. Reflective writing has been used in undergraduate medical curricula to inculcate empathetic attitudes in medical students. Journal writing has been used to enhance reflection in a confidential space. We aimed to introduce our medical students to reflective writing of their daily experiences, both to enhance empathetic attitudes as well as to use the entries to inform curricular changes.