A clinical refresher course for medical scientist trainees

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Physician-Scientist Training

Background:

• MD-PhD students face challenges returning to clinical medicine after research.
• A clinical refresher program was developed to bridge this gap.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe and evaluate a clinical refresher program for MD-PhD students.
• To assess the program's effectiveness in restoring clinical skills.

Main Methods:

• A nine-week program combining didactic and practical review of history, physical exam, presentation, and clinical reasoning.
• Utilized diverse modalities including classroom activities and patient encounters.
• Final assessment involved standardized patient examinations.

Main Results:

• Students achieved comparable scores to second-year medical students on standardized patient exams.
• All students reported increased confidence in history and physical examinations.
• Clerkship scores showed a higher percentage of honors for MD-PhD students post-implementation.

Conclusions:

• The clinical refresher course effectively retrains MD-PhD students for clinical training.
• The program restores clinical skills to a level comparable to medical student peers.
• It successfully prepares students to re-enter clinical training after their research phase.