Trialing a new clinical clerkship record in Japanese clinical training

Abstract

Dear editor Undergraduate medical education has several problems.1,2 In particular, clinical training, which is the unique feature of medical education, tends to be performed less extensively. In Japan, the current clinical training method is clinical clerkship (CC). CC differs from conventional clinical training, which is study by observation. In CC, the student is a member of the medical team and participates in actual medical care. The student is allowed to practice medical actions in the definite range under the guidance and monitoring of a teaching doctor. Therefore, students can acquire practical clinical abilities. In their study of medical care, students are required to have their own sense of identity and personal responsibility. Clinical training is performed by CC following the original curriculum for diagnoses and treatments in various medical departments. The evaluation system is very important in CC.3 Student doctors in our school are evaluated using a special checklist, which includes the special training contents and medical actions performed in CC. Students input their practical contents and medical actions into the checklist items, which can then be used in analysis and evaluation. Tutors input their evaluation of their students into the checklist items. Finally, the CC director evaluates these checklists thoroughly. We devised a CC record (CCR) to be trialed in clinical training (Figure 1). The CCR is a tool to enable CC to be performed more beneficially and smoothly. Fundamentally, the CCR is not used for evaluation. We never grade CCR comments and we do not examine these comments for promotion. The CCR is an information-transfer system between medical departments. Therefore, the teaching doctors can obtain the students’ information from the previous medical department. For example, the tutors or CC director can easily observe students’ abilities using computer-based testing and objective structured clinical examination (Figure 1). The CCR was originally for students. The CCR may supplement students’ defects and raise their performance levels. The CCR proves to be very useful in identifying students’ problems. By drawing attention to students’ problems, the CCR enables these issues to be addressed and improves their abilities. Additionally, the CCR has another role, which is to indicate the merit of students. Some examples of positive or negative CCR comments are as follows: Figure 1 CC record cover and contents.