Evaluating Study Techniques for Australian Medical Students During Clinical Placement: A Scoping Review

Transitioning from pre-clinical to clinical phases of medical education represents a unique challenge as students learn most content through self-directed learning (SDL), rather than the more prescriptive pre-clinical curriculum. There is a range of SDL study techniques employed by medical students on placement. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital resources, prompting a need to reassess the study techniques that best support clinical-year medical students. However, there is a lack of research on which study techniques Australian clinical-year medical students find most effective. The objective of this study is to evaluate the evidence on student-perceived utility of common study techniques for SDL whilst on clinical placement in Australia. A qualitative scoping review of literature on PubMed and Medline Ovid was performed in 2024. Study inclusion criteria for articles were published articles, English language, publication within 20 years, and focus on clinical-year medical students. Exclusion criteria were review articles, investigations focusing on a specific educational intervention, and studies including only pre-clinical students. Studies were qualitatively appraised and synthesised by tabulation in Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA, US). Risk of bias analysis was not performed. Nine studies from Australia, the USA, the UK, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia were analysed. This included seven cross-sectional, one mixed-methods, and one qualitative analysis. Sample size ranged from 12 to 350 students. Only two studies were conducted after the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, the results of the included studies demonstrate a consistent trend towards third-party online tools, including question banks, mobile applications, and revision courses for SDL. The strength of evidence on students' perceived efficacy of study techniques in the post-pandemic era presented is limited due to the small number of included studies and the lack of formal study appraisal. There is also poor generalisability of pre-pandemic and international studies to the contemporary Australian context. As there is a lack of a standardised tool to evaluate study technique utility, comparison between studies is difficult. Ongoing research is required to develop evidence-based guidelines that can assist students in commencing SDL whilst on clinical placement.