Beginning Medical Students Research Articles

A Career Eulogy Reflective Exercise: A View into Early Professional Identity Formation

Beginning medical students have a very early idea of what their physician identity will be. Providing a brief structured opportunity to reflect on the end of their career can be an important first step in identity formation. A reflective exercise was used in the summer prior to beginning medical school as each class of students at a regional rural medical school began a summer prematriculation program from 2015-2019. Students wrote what they wished to be said about them at the end of their career using a “Career Eulogy.” Identifiers were removed and narratives were coded into recurring text clusters by the authors. The students, on an anonymous evaluation, strongly agreed that the exercise facilitated the accomplishment of the program goals. Reflections from 42 entering medical students indicated a preference to be remembered for compassion, passion, quality, and patient relationships. Men more frequently mentioned family and enjoying life, and women more frequently mentioned patient relationships. Rural students included quality and being a teacher of medical students more frequently, and those with a physician parent included passion and community more frequently. Those who later chose family medicine as a specialty more often included references to enjoying life and family. This reflective exercise provided useful insight into early professional identity formation among these medical students and served to encourage group discussion. It could be used with larger, more diverse groups to determine its value and clarify true differences among the demographic and specialty choice patterns. This exercise could also be used annually for each student, providing a longitudinal view of identity formation.

Virtues-Based Advice for Beginning Medical Students

The goals of this article are to present a framework, based on John Gregory's (1724-1773) concept of professionalism, for advising beginning medical students about what is important to training and to the practice of medicine. The author presents Gregory's concept of professionalism with an emphasis on the related virtues. Members of the editorial board of Academic Psychiatry were also surveyed for their advice for beginning students. There are four fundamental virtues that originated from Gregory's concept of professionalism: integrity, compassion, self-effacement, and self-sacrifice. Medical students should actively cultivate these virtues to promote excellence in every clinical encounter. These four fundamental virtues together obligate medical students to learn and practice in accordance with the principles of evidence-based medicine and to protect and promote the interests of patients.

Virtues-Based Advice for Beginning Medical Students

The goals of this article are to present a framework, based on John Gregory's (1724-1773) concept of professionalism, for advising beginning medical students about what is important to training and to the practice of medicine. The author presents Gregory's concept of professionalism with an emphasis on the related virtues. Members of the editorial board of Academic Psychiatry were also surveyed for their advice for beginning students. There are four fundamental virtues that originated from Greogory's concept of professionalism: integrity, compassion, self-effacement, and self-sacrifice. Medical students should actively cultivate these virtues in order to promote excellence in every clinical encounter. These four fundamental virtues together obligate medical students to learn and practice in accordance with the principles of evidence-based medicine and to protect and promote the interests of patients.

Medical students' note-taking in a medical biochemistry course: an initial exploration.

Beginning medical students spend numerous hours every week attending basic science lectures and taking notes. Medical faculty often wonder whether they should give students pre-printed instructors' notes before lectures. Proponents of this strategy argue that provided notes enhance learning by facilitating the accurate transmission of information, while opponents counter that provided notes inhibit students' cognitive processing or even discourage students from attending lectures. Little if any research has directly addressed medical students' note-taking or the value of providing instructors' notes. The educational literature does suggest that taking lecture notes enhances university students' learning. University students perform best on post-lecture testing if they review a combination of provided notes and their own personal notes, particularly if the provided notes follow a 'skeletal' format that encourages active note-taking.

Attitudes of beginning medical students toward older persons: a five-campus study. The University of California Academic Geriatric Resource Program Student Survey Research Group.

To examine the attitudes of beginning medical students toward older persons and their medical care. Cross-sectional survey. Five University of California medical schools. Beginning medical school students from the Class of 1994. Demographic characteristics, personal contacts with older persons, and previous coursework or research experience with older persons were assessed. Knowledge with regard to aging was measured with a group of 10 questions, which were modified from the Facts on Aging Quiz. The attitudes of students toward older persons were assessed using the Aging Semantic Differential (ASD), the Maxwell-Sullivan Attitude Scale (MSAS), and two case scenarios. Ninety-two percent of the participants (554 of 603) responded; 93% of these responses were usable. Students were much less likely to admit an acutely ill 85-year-old woman to an intensive care unit, intubate her, and treat her aggressively than they were to treat an acutely ill 10-year-old girl with underlying chronic leukemia. In multivariate models, male gender and younger student age were both independently predictive of less favorable attitudes regarding a 70-year-old person on the ASD Instrumental-Ineffective subscale. Asian-Americans and males had less favorable attitudes on the Autonomous-Dependent and the Personal Acceptability-Unacceptability subscales. More knowledge with regard to aging was predictive of more favorable attitudes on the Autonomous-Dependent and Personal Acceptability-Unacceptability subscales. Male gender and Asian-American ethnicity were significantly associated with less favorable attitudes on the two scales derived from the MSASs. Students who had previously visited a long-term care facility were more likely to disagree that it takes too much time to care for older persons. Beginning medical students have already formed some unfavorable attitudes about older persons. Few independent predictors (either sociodemographic or students' previous experiences) of student attitudes could be identified that would help in the selection of students who had more favorable attitudes toward older persons. Hence, attempts to generate physicians with good attitudes must rely on curricular efforts during medical school and residency training.

Effects of Social Welfare Practice on Beginning Medical Students

Effects of Social Welfare Practice on Beginning Medical Students