Preparation for practice: What are students learning for?

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Clinical Skills Development
• Healthcare Professional Training

Background:

• Junior doctors report feeling unprepared for clinical practice.
• Current medical education transitions often neglect intrinsic factors like motivation.
• Motivation and emotional engagement are crucial for clinical competence.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore medical undergraduates' and clinicians' attitudes towards learning.
• To investigate how these attitudes influence learning motivation.
• To identify discrepancies in learning perspectives between students and professionals.

Main Methods:

• Conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 medical undergraduates and 8 clinicians.
• Transcribed interview data.
• Thematically analyzed qualitative data to identify key themes.

Main Results:

• Students prioritized factual knowledge and exam performance, equating it with competence.
• Clinicians emphasized soft skills, clinical reasoning, and experiential learning.
• Clinicians perceived the pre-clinical curriculum as overly focused on irrelevant factual recall.

Conclusions:

• Student extrinsic motivation for exams leads to surface learning, creating a skills gap.
• A disconnect exists between pre-clinical factual emphasis and clinical practice needs.
• Recommends shifting from content overload/high-stakes exams to patient-centric teaching for better learning outcomes.