Conducting Patient Assessments as a Medical Student: Frequency, Barriers, and Facilitators

Abstract

Background: Opportunities for medical students to engage in deliberate practice through conducting patient assessments may be declining, but data on the numbers of patients assessed by students during training are lacking. Purposes: The study described relationships between the frequency of patient assessments, student confidence, belief they had seen sufficient patients, and their perceptions of barriers and facilitators of seeing patients. Methods: We employed survey methodology to estimate the number of patient assessments conducted across 6 rotations in the 1st year of clinical training, gather ratings of confidence and student belief they had conducted sufficient patient assessments, and barriers and facilitators of seeing patients. Results: Rotations focused on general medicine and surgery provided more opportunities for patient assessments than specialist rotations (all p < .001). Students conducting more than 10 patient assessments rated confidence in conducting patient assessments and belief they had seen enough patients for their clinical learning, higher than students who saw 10 or fewer patients (all p < .001). Conclusions: Our study demonstrated variation in the frequency of patient assessments, and weak relationships between numbers of assessments, student confidence, and barriers to seeing patients. Further investigation is warranted of the impact of fewer opportunities for deliberate practice of skills for expertise development.