Perceptions of preparedness: How hospital-based orientation can enhance the transition from academic to clinical learning.

Abstract

Background: Clinical placements are essential for applied learning experiences in health professions education. Unfortunately, there is little consensus on how best to prepare learners for the transition between academic and clinical learning. We explored learners’ perceptions of hospital-based orientation and resulting preparedness for clinical placement.
 Methods: Sixty-three learners participated in a total of 18 semi-structured focus groups, during their clinical placements. Data were analyzed thematically.
 Results: We organized learners’ perceptions of hospital-based orientation that support their preparedness for placement into three themes: (1) adequate site orientation for learner acquisition of organization acumen and (2) clinical preceptor training to support unit/service and (3) individual components.
 Conclusion: Thoughtful attention to hospital-based orientation can support learners in transitioning from academic to clinical learning. Hospital organizations should attend to all three components during orientation to better support learners’ preparedness for clinical learning.

Educating the bystander: How contributing to ward rounds as a junior doctor or medical student can be helpful in preparation for clinical responsibilities.

“…However, this did not stop me from feeling apprehensive when as a junior doctor, I experienced my first surgical ward round. As seen in previous studies, final year medical students are often not confident in actively taking part in ward rounds 3,4 hence my apprehension towards this part of the job is unlikely to be unique as a newly qualified doctor. By helping at the urology boot camp, I was hopeful that it would help me become more confident and find ways to be more successful in this part of my role.…”

“…More training for final year medical students and new doctors is required to make them better prepared for ward rounds. 3 - 5 There is lack of consensus regarding how best to prepare doctors transitioning from medical school to the clinical environment 5 and the approach taken in the urology boot camp is one I think could be adopted in training. The simulated ward round highlighted the need for 1 st year junior doctors to become more proficient in being part of a surgical ward round.…”

The “virtual OR:” creation of a surgical video-based gynaecologic surgery teaching session to improve medical student orientation and supplement surgical learning during COVID-19

“…Providing effective orientation and introducing concepts in environments with gradually increasing fidelity are established methods of preparing medical students for these novel experiences. 5,6…”

“…These reflect domains of orientation that learners identified as contributing to preparedness in a prior study. 6 Further, this lower fidelity "virtual OR" experience helps to decrease the number of unfamiliar elements of the clinical operative experience, thereby decreasing cognitive load and allowing learning to happen more effectively. This gradual increase in fidelity reflects the best practices for decreasing cognitive load.…”

Resources for clinical learning environment orientation

“…The evolving CLE conceptual frameworks acknowledge the complexity and inter-relatedness of CLE components [ 2 , 4 , 5 ]. The CLE literature, primarily targeted toward educators, may have limited practical utility for learners, and only a few studies superficially mention orientation concepts [ 6 , 7 ]. To address this gap, we developed resources to help supervisors guide CLE orientation and learners to understand important CLE components and elicit further orientation information.…”