Documenting and comparing medical students' clinical experiences.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Clinical Informatics
• Healthcare Systems

Background:

• Decentralization of clinical teaching networks necessitates systematic recording of student clinical experiences.
• Key elements to track include patient case-mix, disease severity, and diagnostic procedures encountered by medical students during clerkships.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate a novel system for documenting medical students' clinical experiences across various clerkships.
• To evaluate the utility of a computer-readable patient encounter card system for capturing clinical learning data.

Main Methods:

• A pocket-sized, computer-readable patient encounter card system was evaluated.
• Data collected from 647 third-year medical students across family medicine, pediatrics, and internal medicine clerkships over three academic years (1997-2000).
• Recorded data included patient encounters, diagnoses, disease severity, and procedures; concordance with medical records was assessed.

Main Results:

• Over 86,000 patient encounter cards were completed by students.
• Significant variations in patient case-mix, disease severity, and diagnostic procedures were observed across the three clerkships.
• Findings demonstrated stability over three academic years, with 77% concordance between student-reported and faculty-confirmed principal diagnoses, supporting data reliability and validity.

Conclusions:

• A system facilitating student documentation of clinical experiences can reveal crucial differences in clerkship learning.
• The collected data provides valuable insights for assessing the nature and quality of medical students' clinical education.