An innovative model for final-year students’ skills training course in internal medicine: ‘essentials from admission to discharge’

Abstract

Clerkships are generally seen as a very favourable learning environment for final-year students. However, in recent years the clinical experience of final-year students has been reported to decline progressively. It was decided, therefore, to introduce an innovative skills training model in internal medicine. Sixty final-year students received four consecutive days of training during their first week, consisting of three-hour sessions on each day. The skills training course reflected a patient history from admission to discharge and included all required routine procedures, typical forms/files and computer interactions. Acceptability was measured with self-administered surveys post-intervention and again 16 weeks later; self-assessment was measured pre-/post-intervention. The skills training course was well accepted by the students and led to a significant improvement in self-assessment. It was considered to be very helpful for work on the wards in both the immediate and the long-term retrospective evaluation. The final-year skills training course allows students to learn how to handle specific tools and applications for their work on the ward. It possesses face validity and is easy to integrate.Practice points•Clerkships are seen to be a very favourable learning environment.•However, final-year students’ clinical experience has declined significantly.•A final-year students’ skills training course is easy to integrate, has face validity and is well accepted by final-year students.•In retrospective evaluation the training is found to help final-year students to become familiar with their work on the ward.•Further research is needed to prove the effectiveness of a final-year students’ skills training course in a group control design.