Lessons learned from a study-group pilot program for medical students perceived to be ‘at risk’

Background: Patient care restrictions created by the COVID-19 pandemic constrained medical students’ ability to interact directly with patients. Additionally, organ transplant recipients faced increasing isolation due to the rise of telemedicine, the importance of social distancing and their immunosuppressed state. We created a pilot program to pair students with transplant patients for structured, virtual encounters and studied its impact on medical students and patients. Methods: In May 2020, medical students conducted virtual visits with patients via telephone or video conferencing. Patients and students were surveyed regarding their experiences and independent focus groups were conducted. The survey responses and focus group discussions were deidentified, transcribed, and analyzed for themes. Results: Ten participating students were in their first, second, or final year of medical school. The 14 patients were liver or kidney transplant recipients or kidney donors. All interactions lasted longer than 30 minutes, with 56% greater than 1 hour. Three themes emerged related to the student experience: improvement of their clinical communication skills, development of knowledge and attitudes related to organ transplantation and donation, and independent management of a patient encounter. Three themes related to the patient experience: appreciation of the opportunity to share their personal patient experience to help educate future physicians, a cathartic and personally illuminating experience and an opportunity to share the message of donation. Conclusions: This pilot program provided a novel opportunity for virtual student-patient interactions that was feasible, well-received, and mutually beneficial. The use of virtual non-medical patient experiences allowed for experiential learning during which students learned about both clinical medicine and enhanced their communication skills directly from patients. Additionally, patients were able to engage with medical students in a new way, as teachers of clinical interactions, and reported a high level of satisfaction in addition to deriving personal benefit.

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Medical Student Leadership Development through a Business School Partnership Model: A Case Study and Implementation Strategy

Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development ◽

10.1177/23821205211010479 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

pp. 238212052110104

Author(s):

Timothy P Daaleman ◽

Mindy Storrie ◽

Gary Beck Dallaghan ◽

Sarah Smithson ◽

Kurt O Gilliland ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Leadership Development ◽

Medical Students ◽

Medical School ◽

Business School ◽

Medical Curriculum ◽

School Curriculum ◽

Learning Model ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Self Awareness ◽

Program Outcomes

Background: There is an ongoing call for leadership development in academic health care and medical students desire more training in this area. Although many schools offer combined MD/MBA programs or leadership training in targeted areas, these programs do not often align with medical school leadership competencies and are limited in reaching a large number of students. Methods: The Leadership Initiative (LI) was a program created by a partnership between a School of Medicine (SOM) and Business School with a learning model that emphasized the progression from principles to practice, and the competencies of self-awareness, communication, and collaboration/teamwork. Through offerings across a medical school curriculum, the LI introduced leadership principles and provided an opportunity to apply them in an interactive activity or simulation. We utilized the existing SOM evaluation platform to collect data on program outcomes that included satisfaction, fidelity to the learning model, and impact. Results: From 2017 to 2020, over 70% of first-year medical students participated in LI course offerings while a smaller percentage of fourth-year students engaged in the curriculum. Most students had no prior awareness of LI course material and were equivocal about their ability to apply lessons learned to their medical school experience. Students reported that the LI offerings provided opportunities to practice the skills and competencies of self-awareness, communication, and collaboration/teamwork. Discussion: Adding new activities to an already crowded medical curriculum was the greatest logistical challenge. The LI was successful in introducing leadership principles but faced obstacles in having participants apply and practice these principles. Most students reported that the LI offerings were aligned with the foundational competencies.

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Tuberculosis: medical students at risk

The Medical Journal of Australia ◽

10.5694/j.1326-5377.1994.tb138261.x ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 160 (7) ◽

pp. 395-397 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Doug Wilkins ◽

Ann J Woolcock ◽

Yvonne E Cossart

Keyword(s):

At Risk ◽

Medical Students ◽

Students At Risk

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Start the Way You Want to Finish: An Intensive Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Orientation Curriculum in Undergraduate Medical Education

Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development ◽

10.1177/23821205211000352 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

pp. 238212052110003

Author(s):

Denise L. F. Davis ◽

DoQuyen Tran-Taylor ◽

Elizabeth Imbert ◽

Jeffrey O. Wong ◽

Calvin L. Chou

Keyword(s):

Medical Students ◽

Communication Skills ◽

Personal Narratives ◽

Skills Training ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Relationship Building ◽

Cultural Humility ◽

Mindfulness Skills ◽

Orientation Week ◽

Equity And Inclusion

Problem: Medical students often feel unprepared to care for patients whose cultural backgrounds differ from their own. Programs in medical schools have begun to address health: inequities; however, interventions vary in intensity, effectiveness, and student experience. Intervention: The authors describe an intensive 2-day diversity, equity, and inclusion curriculum for medical students in their orientation week prior to starting formal classes. Rather than using solely a knowledge-based “cultural competence” or a reflective “cultural humility” approach, an experiential curriculum was employed that links directly to fundamental communication skills vital to interactions with patients and teams, and critically important to addressing interpersonal disparities. Specifically, personal narratives were incorporated to promote individuation and decrease implicit bias, relationship-centered skills practice to improve communication across differences, and mindfulness skills to help respond to bias when it occurs. Brief didactics highlighting student and faculty narratives of difference were followed by small group sessions run by faculty trained to facilitate sessions on equity and inclusion. Context: Orientation week for matriculating first-year students at a US medical school. Impact: Matriculating students highly regarded an innovative 2-day diversity, equity, and inclusion orientation curriculum that emphasized significant relationship-building with peers, in addition to core concepts and skills in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Lessons learned: This orientation represented an important primer to concepts, skills, and literature that reinforce the necessity of training in diversity, equity, and inclusion. The design team found that intensive faculty development and incorporating diversity concepts into fundamental communication skills training were necessary to perpetuate this learning. Two areas of further work emerged: (1) the emphasis on addressing racism and racial equity as paradigmatic belies further essential understanding of intersectionality, and (2) uncomfortable conversations about privilege and marginalization arose, requiring expert facilitation.

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Development of a Positive Psychology Program (LAVENDER) for Preserving Medical Student Well-being: A Single-Arm Pilot Study

Global Advances in Health and Medicine ◽

10.1177/2164956120988481 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 ◽

pp. 216495612098848

Author(s):

Elaine O Cheung ◽

Ian Kwok ◽

Allison B Ludwig ◽

William Burton ◽

Xinzi Wang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Medical Student ◽

Medical Students ◽

Positive Psychology ◽

Positive Emotion ◽

Albert Einstein College ◽

Albert Einstein ◽

Well Being ◽

Preliminary Evidence ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Psychology Program

Background Mental health tends to worsen over the course of medical school, with steep declines in well-being in students’ clerkship year (M3). Positive emotion promotes adaptive coping to stress and may help preserve medical student well-being. Objective This study describes the development of LAVENDER (Leveraging Affect and Valuing Empathy for Nurturing Doctors’ Emotional Resilience), a program aimed at increasing positive emotion to preserve well-being in medical students. Methods We conducted a single-arm pilot of LAVENDER, a positive psychology intervention developed for medical students delivered in an interactive classroom format to a cohort of 157 third-year medical students at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Our primary outcome was the acceptability of LAVENDER. We also examined preliminary efficacy using measures of emotion, stress and burnout collected at each intervention session. Results LAVENDER showed good acceptability: 76% of participants agreed that the LAVENDER skills were useful and 72% agreed that they would recommend the LAVENDER program to others. Qualitative feedback suggested that medical students enjoyed the program and found the skills to be useful for coping with stress, but also reported the following barriers to engagement: lack of time to practice the skills, resistance to the mandatory nature of the wellness sessions, and difficulty integrating the skills in daily life. We did not find support for the preliminary efficacy of LAVENDER for improving medical student well-being in students’ clerkship year. Participants showed decreases in positive emotion and increases in symptoms of burnout over the intervention period ( ps < .01). Conclusion The current paper describes the development and a single-arm pilot test of LAVENDER, a positive psychology program tailored for medical students. Although we found preliminary evidence for the acceptability of LAVENDER, we did not find support for the preliminary efficacy. Lessons learned and next steps for the program are discussed.

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Development of a 'toolkit' to identify medical students at risk of failure to thrive on the course: an exploratory retrospective case study

BMC Medical Education ◽

10.1186/1472-6920-11-95 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 29

Author(s):

Janet Yates

Keyword(s):

At Risk ◽

Medical Students ◽

Failure To Thrive ◽

Retrospective Case ◽

Students At Risk ◽

Risk Of Failure ◽

Retrospective Case Study

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Lessons Learned from Implementation and Evaluation of an Evidence-Based Sex Education Pilot Program for Minority Adolescent Females

American Journal of Health Studies ◽

10.47779/ajhs.2018.72 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 33 (4) ◽

Author(s):

Amelia C. Huelskamp ◽

Hannah P. Catalano

Keyword(s):

Sex Education ◽

Program Implementation ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Educational Process ◽

Summer Program ◽

Pilot Program ◽

Group Of Seven ◽

Minority Girls ◽

Minority Adolescent ◽

Age Range

The purpose of the pilot program was to increase knowledge, beliefs, and intentions related toabstinence and safer sex practices in a small cohort of minority adolescent girls. Researchers implementedand evaluated the Be Proud! Be Responsible! curriculum with a small group of seven minority girls ages13 to 18 who were sexually inexperienced during a four-week summer program at a Boys and Girls Club.Lessons learned from our program include that educators should first take steps to establish rapport priorto program implementation, secondly, there should be an increased number of program sessions than pres-ently in the curriculum and thirdly, grouping participants into cohorts of smaller age range may be moreconducive to the educational process.

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