A quantitative analysis comparing pre-clinical volunteering hours with third-year medical students' preceptor...

Many studies have suggested that participation in pre-clerkship volunteering opportunities is associated with higher confidence in clinical skills, improved perspectives on social barriers, and greater soft skills and empathy. While these studies have described a positive impact on subjective qualities, few studies have investigated the impact on objective standards such as third-year evaluations.

The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between volunteer hours and third-year evaluations, with the hypothesis being that these previously studied, perceived benefits of volunteerism would translate to better evaluations.

This retrospective cohort study stratified a class of 161 medical students by volunteer hours completed during pre-clerkship years and self-recorded into the Translating Osteopathic Understanding into Community Health (TOUCH) reporting system. Preceptor evaluations were gathered utilizing the school's report system and were analyzed in categories that included communication, problem solving, clinical skills, osteopathic manipulative medicine (OMM), medical knowledge, and professional/ethical standards. The statistical analyses utilized included Pearson and Spearman correlations.

At the time of data accruement, only 127 of the 161 students had completed all required rotations and had completed evaluations. Therefore, the final sample size analyzed was 127 students and 1,321 evaluations. The average overall score on evaluations was 4.47, and the average number of logged TOUCH hours was 65.63. After Pearson and Spearman correlational analyses, no statically significant results were found (p>0.05).

Although previous studies suggest the positive impact of volunteering on confidence in clinical abilities, this study suggests no statistically significant correlation between TOUCH hours and preceptor evaluations. Current literature suggests that this may be due to preceptor subjectivity, evaluator and clinical engagement, and grade inflation. Given that evaluations are an important factor in residency interview selection, this study raises the question on how to adapt volunteerism and evaluation standards to better prepare osteopathic medical students for residency and beyond.