"Transition to Clinical Years" Podcast Series: A Pilot Project to Support Rising Third-Year Students

This pilot study assessed the feasibility of podcasts as a teaching tool to support medical students for the transition to clinical training. Podcasts offer a flexible educational resource for students, allowing students to listen to content on their own time. There has been an increase in the use of podcasts for medical education and evidence that it may boost academic performance, but there are few resources available for teaching the soft skills of medicine, such as time management, adaptability, and problem solving. To address this gap, four faculty members at Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine (Virginia Campus) developed a podcast series with four short (10-15 minute) episodes covering non-clinical skills, including time management, clinical rotation tips, test-taking strategies, and the transition to clinical years. Students were invited via email to voluntarily complete anonymous pre- and post-intervention surveys using a Likert scale to assess their confidence and preparedness. Since Likert-scale data is ordinal and non-parametric, and as survey responses were not matched by participant, a Mann-Whitney U test was used to analyze differences between pre- and post-intervention responses. The number of participants ranged from 6 to 12 per episode. Preliminary data showed an overall increase in average scores, rising from 3.12 to 3.67 on a 1-5 scale, with statistically significant improvements in the episodes on the transition to clinical years and time management (p < 0.05). These findings suggest that podcasts may serve as a valuable supplemental tool in medical education, though further research with larger sample sizes is needed.