Related Experiment Videos
Medical students, clinical preventive services, and shared decision-making
Carole W Keefe1, Margaret E Thompson, Mary Margaret Noel
1Michigan State University, College of Human Medicine, East Lansing 48824, USA.
Summary
Medical students are learning shared decision-making (SDM) skills for preventive care. While receptive to SDM, students require deeper knowledge of screening benefits and risks to effectively guide patient choices.
Area of Science:
- Medical Education
- Preventive Healthcare
- Health Communication
Background:
- Improving access to preventive care faces patient, provider, and system barriers.
- Patients may lack knowledge or be skeptical about prevention's importance.
- Physicians face time constraints, inadequate training, and concerns about prevention effectiveness.
Purpose of the Study:
- Enhance medical student learning of clinical preventive services.
- Teach students to involve patients in shared decision-making (SDM) for preventive services.
Main Methods:
- Students reviewed evidence-based information and guidelines (e.g., U.S. Preventive Services Task Force).
- Trained in an adapted SDM model for discussing screening services (lipids, colorectal, prostate, breast cancer).
- Utilized faculty modeling, group discussions, web-based cases, simulations, and performance-based assessments.
Main Results:
- Medical students demonstrated willingness to adopt SDM skills.
- Students need enhanced understanding of screening benefits and risks for effective patient counseling.
- Performance-based assessments revealed student knowledge gaps and informed curricular enhancements.
Conclusions:
- An explicit SDM model is an effective introductory tool for students.
- Further faculty development in SDM and increased formative feedback are recommended.
- Resource-intensive performance-based assessments provide valuable insights into student learning and skill development.