1. Preparation of Y4 medical students for GP placements
Collins, L.S., Mimnagh, C., Farrington, R. .
Division of Medical Education, University of Manchester
Background/Aims
Results
Preparing medical students to be doctors, fit to practice comfortably and effectively in the workplace, is a fundamental aim of any medical course.
The work is complex and demanding, requiring multiple competencies and self-care.
Challenges include:
Using robust clinical reasoning to make safe diagnoses
Prescribing safely
Working in multidisciplinary and diverse teams
Managing multifaceted ethical and professional situations
Maintaining personal health, life-long learning and CPD
A total of 51 (8.5%) GP tutors completed the questionnaire.
The Cronbach alpha coefficient for this questionnaire was 0.93 which indicates a good to excellent degree of internal consistency with this sample.
Conclusion
Preparedness for placements is important for student well-being and maximising their learning opportunities in the workplace environment.
Decreasing their cognitive load by preparing students to meet the challenge of undifferentiated patient presentations using sound clinical reasoning methods should help. In order to assess this, it is important that measureable characteristics are identified which reliability indicate whether students are prepared for GP placements.
The final 27 item questionnaire represents the consensus of experienced clinical educators that the questions are a valid measure of student preparedness for placements and a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.93 suggests excellent internal consistency. Therefore the questionnaire is a reliable measure of preparedness for placements with this sample.
A low response rate (8.5%) for this questionnaire, may have be linked to the fact that some GP tutors didn’t receive the questionnaire until 8 months after student supervision had taken place. The forthcoming evaluation phase will capture data at the end of each placement block in order to maximise responses.
Phase 2 of this evaluation follows the first year of the implementation of revisions in order to make comparisons.
Medical students join a community of practice in workplace based placements, but there is scant evidence of their preparedness.
The aim was to develop a reliable questionnaire to test GP tutors perspective on student preparedness, both before and after programmatic revisions on the Manchester MB,ChB course.
These revisions have centred on teaching clinical reasoning and introducing clinical supervision for psychological well-being in year 3. They have involved exposure to good GP role models in the classroom.
Methods
Questionnaire development
Questions based on Competencies form Tomorrow’s Doctors “Outcomes for Graduates” 1 as well as a validated questionnaire on characteristics of student preparedness for clinical learning2
Comprises 27 items with a 6 point unipolar response Likert scale.
Ethics approval was obtained from the University of Manchester.
Questionnaire sent out prior to MB ChB
programme revisions affecting Y4.
Preliminary Stage
Expert panel agree questions are valid measure of preparedness.
Question content assessed for readability, clarity and comprehensiveness.
Exploratory Stage
Questionnaire ed to >600 Year 4 GP tutors who supervised students in 2016/17.
Final Stage
Cronbach's alpha calculated for questionnaire responses using SPSS.
References
1 General Medical Council. Tomorrow’s Doctors. London: GMC 2009.
2 Chipchase, L. S., Buttrum, P. J., Dunwoodie, R., Hill, A. E., Mandrusiak, A., & Moran, M. (2012). Characteristics of student preparedness for clinical learning: clinical educator perspectives using the Delphi approach. BMC medical education, 12(1), 112.
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Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health