Abstract
BackgroundIntensive study of the biomedical sciences remains a core component of undergraduate medical education with medical students often completing up to 2 years of biomedical science training prior to entering clerkships. While it is generally accepted that biomedical science knowledge is essential for clinical practice because it forms the basis of clinical reasoning and decision-making, whether medical students perceive an expanded role for their biomedical science knowledge remains to be examined.MethodsWe conducted a qualitative research study to explore how medical students in the first clerkship year perceived the relevance of biomedical science knowledge to clinical medicine during this pivotal time as they begin their transition from students to physicians. To identify previously unidentified perspectives and insights, we asked students to write brief essays in response to the prompt: How is biomedical science knowledge relevant to clinical medicine? Ten codes and four themes were interpreted through an applied thematic analysis of students’ essays.ResultsAnalysis of students’ essays revealed novel perspectives previously unidentified by survey studies and focus groups. Specifically, students perceived their biomedical science knowledge as contributory to the development of adaptive expertise and professional identity formation, both viewed as essential developmental milestones for medical students.ConclusionsThe results of this study have important implications for ongoing curricular reform efforts to improve the structure, content, delivery, and assessment of the undergraduate medical curriculum. Identifying the explicit and tacit elements of the formal, informal, and hidden curriculum that enable biomedical science knowledge to contribute to the development of adaptive expertise and professional identity formation will enable the purposeful design of innovations to support the acquisition of these critical educational outcomes.
Highlights
Intensive study of the biomedical sciences remains a core component of undergraduate medical education with medical students often completing up to 2 years of biomedical science training prior to entering clerkships
Students were asked to: 1) select a patient encounter, 2) identify and fill gaps in biomedical science knowledge, 3) reflect on how the new learning impacted the care of their patient, and 4) consider how this process may impact their future clinical practice, and reevaluate their perception of the relevance of biomedical science knowledge to clinical medicine
To determine whether medical students entering the first year of clerkships perceive an expanded role for their biomedical science knowledge beyond its role in clinical reasoning and decision making, we asked students at the beginning of their family and community medicine and pediatric and adolescent medicine clerkship to reflect on how biomedical science knowledge was relevant to clinical medicine
Summary
Intensive study of the biomedical sciences remains a core component of undergraduate medical education with medical students often completing up to 2 years of biomedical science training prior to entering clerkships. Medical students often complete up to 2 years of intensive study in the biomedical sciences in the undergraduate medical curriculum This knowledge base serves as the foundation for clinical reasoning and decision-making, and is required to address novel, complex, and ambiguous clinical problems that necessitate a deeper fund of knowledge, one that goes beyond reliance on pattern recognition and algorithms alone [1,2,3,4,5,6]. While evidence suggests that some of these changes may not impact academic performance per se [25], whether these and other critical outcomes of medical education such as professionalism, professional identity formation, adaptive expertise, and humanistic approaches to patient care are impacted remains to be examined [26] For these reasons, further study is needed to anticipate how curricular reforms that impact training in the biomedical sciences might influence physician training
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