Learning through work: clinical shadowing of junior doctors by first year medical students

Early clinical contact (ECC) is a key feature of undergraduate programmes, yet they make significant demands on senior clinicians delivering it and usually focus on patient contact.

To explore the potential of an ECC activity oriented to work as a junior doctor and the clinical environment, and the use of very junior doctors as facilitators of this learning.

For two academic years, all first year medical students at UCL Medical School shadowed a Foundation Year (FY) doctor for a four-hour shift to experience and understand the work of junior doctors. Feedback from students and FY doctors was gathered and analysed.

The students found the FY doctors to be good near-peer tutors and enjoyed exploring the clinical environment, but felt that the unstructured learning environment was difficult. The FY doctors felt that learning in and about the clinical environment was an important learning outcome for the students, although they found supervising junior medical students in a shadowing context difficult.

FY doctors are an effective and under-utilised resource in introducing novices to the role of a medical professional in the clinical environment; however students and FY doctors need support to maximise the learning potential of early shadowing activities.