Undergraduate pediatrics clerkship student must-see list: prioritization and agreement between students and faculty...

Ensuring reliable exposure to core pediatric problems during the clerkship is challenging when case-mix varies across clinical sites. A data-informed, stakeholder-aligned "must-see" list can focus bedside encounters and guide supplemental teaching.

To identify prioritized pediatric illnesses mapped to common clinical presentations, quantify agreement between students and faculty/physicians, and estimate the number of student raters needed for reliable curriculum monitoring.

UAE-based cross-sectional survey of undergraduate medical students who completed the pediatrics clerkship and faculty/physicians involved in undergraduate pediatric teaching.

Illnesses nested within clinical presentation sections were rated on a 5-point priority scale (5 = must see, 1 = must not see). Means ± SEM were summarized by illness and subgroup (students/doctors), illnesses were ranked, and group alignment was examined using Pearson r (95% CI via Fisher z), Spearman rho, and two-way ICCs based on illness-level subgroup means. Benjamini-Hochberg false discovery rate adjustment was applied to per-presentation tests. A generalizability-theory decision study (D-study) projected reliability (G-coefficient) across different numbers of student raters.

Forty-nine usable responses were analyzed (39 students, 10 faculty/physicians). Highest-rated items included asthma, bronchiolitis, pneumonia, gastroenteritis, febrile seizure, iron deficiency anemia, and heart murmur. Students' and doctors' illness-level means were strongly aligned (Pearson r = 0.863, 95% CI 0.794-0.910, p < 0.001; Spearman rho = 0.867, 95% CI 0.798-0.914, p < 0.001; n = 81). Agreement was good to excellent for subgroup means [ICC(2,1) = 0.920 (0.841-0.958); ICC(3,1) = 0.932 (0.862-0.963)]. The D-study indicated that 10 student raters were sufficient to reach G > =0.80 in these data (projected G = 0.949).

Students and faculty/physicians showed strong alignment on a practical, presentation-based core of pediatric "must-see" illnesses. Programs can prioritize real-patient exposure for the highest-ranked problems, use simulation or structured cases when exposure is limited, and monitor exposure with low-burden periodic surveys.