Enhancing the Obstetrics and Gynecology Clerkship

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The study evaluates the implementation of a Practice and Feedback Simulation experience (PF-SIMs) to assess clinical competencies during the clerkships and to provide faculty with data to evaluate student performance. METHODS: The PF-SIMs was created and implemented for all third-year clerkships. The experience involves five clinical scenarios enabling students to practice and obtain feedback on their cultural competence, procedural skills, use of evidence in patient care, team skills, and response to feedback. The obstetrics and gynecology case challenges included understanding “noncompliance,” pelvic examination, literature search strategy, approaching a decompensating patient, and giving bad news. The PF-SIM is scheduled before the mid-clerkship evaluation and each student creates a personal learning plan afterwards. RESULTS: Data from 368 students were analyzed for 2012 through 2014. All questions are formatted with yes or no answers. Significantly lower scores were observed for the Procedure and Team Skills stations when compared with Contextual Competence and the Challenging interactions ones. No significant differences were found in student's performance by year or by rotation. Students provided positive feedback on their experiences, eg, recognize their strengths and weaknesses, appreciated the feedback received, learned good rationale and enhanced their cultural competence skills. CONCLUSION: PF-SIMs data enable identification of student strengths and weaknesses and focuses faculty on necessary quality improvement of the clerkship and student's performance. It also helps to better prepare our students for the USMLE step 2 CS.