Dataset Information

Leadership and management in the undergraduate medical curriculum: a qualitative study of students' attitudes and opinions at one UK medical school.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To explore undergraduate medical students' attitudes towards and opinions about leadership and management education.

Design

Between 2009 and 2012 we conducted a qualitative study comprising five focus group discussions, each devoted to one of the five domains in the Medical Leadership Competency Framework, (Personal Qualities, Working with Others, Managing Services, Improving Services and Setting Direction). Each discussion examined what should be learnt, when should learning occur, what methods should be used, how should learning be assessed, what are the barriers to such education.

Participants

28 students from all three clinical years (4-6) of whom 10 were women.

Results

2 inter-related themes emerged: understanding the broad perspective of patients and other stakeholders involved in healthcare provision and the need to make leadership and management education relevant in the clinical context. Topics suggested by students included structure of the National Health Service (NHS), team working skills, decision-making and negotiating skills. Patient safety was seen as particularly important. Students preferred experiential learning, with placements seen as providing teaching opportunities. Structured observation, reflection, critical appraisal and analysis of mistakes at all levels were mentioned as existing opportunities for integrating leadership and management education. Students' views about assessment and timing of such education were mixed. Student feedback figured prominently as a method of delivery and a means of assessment, while attitudes of medical professionals, students and of society in general were seen as barriers.

Conclusions

Medical students may be more open to leadership and management education than thought hitherto. These findings offer insights into how students view possible developments in leadership and management education and stress the importance of developing broad perspectives and clinical relevance in this context.

SUBMITTER: Quince T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4078777 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Leadership and management in the undergraduate medical curriculum: a qualitative study of students' attitudes and opinions at one UK medical school.

Quince Thelma T Abbas Mark M Murugesu Sughashini S Crawley Francesca F Hyde Sarah S Wood Diana D Benson John J

BMJ open 20140625 6

<h4>Objective</h4>To explore undergraduate medical students' attitudes towards and opinions about leadership and management education.<h4>Design</h4>Between 2009 and 2012 we conducted a qualitative study comprising five focus group discussions, each devoted to one of the five domains in the Medical Leadership Competency Framework, (Personal Qualities, Working with Others, Managing Services, Improving Services and Setting Direction). Each discussion examined what should be learnt, when should lea ...[more]

PMID: 24965917

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Project description:BACKGROUND: There is a growing acknowledgement that doctors need to develop leadership and management competences to become more actively involved in the planning, delivery and transformation of patient services. We undertook a systematic review of what is known concerning the knowledge, skills and attitudes of medical students regarding leadership and management. Here we report the results pertaining to the attitudes of students to provide evidence to inform curriculum development in this developing field of medical education. METHODS: We searched major electronic databases and citation indexes within the disciplines of medicine, education, social science and management. We undertook hand searching of major journals, and reference and citation tracking. We accessed websites of UK medical institutions and contacted individuals working within the field. RESULTS: 26 studies were included. Most were conducted in the USA, using mainly quantitative methods. We used inductive analysis of the topics addressed by each study to identity five main content areas: Quality Improvement; Managed Care, Use of Resources and Costs; General Leadership and Management; Role of the Doctor, and Patient Safety. Students have positive attitudes to clinical practice guidelines, quality improvement techniques and multidisciplinary teamwork, but mixed attitudes to managed care, cost containment and medical error. Education interventions had variable effects on students' attitudes. Medical students perceive a need for leadership and management education but identified lack of curriculum time and disinterest in some activities as potential barriers to implementation. CONCLUSIONS: The findings from our review may reflect the relatively little emphasis given to leadership and management in medical curricula. However, students recognise a need to develop leadership and management competences. Although further work needs to be undertaken, using rigorous methods, to identify the most effective and cost-effective curriculum innovations, this review offers the only currently available summary of work examining the attitudes of students to this important area of development for future doctors.

Project description:BackgroundThere is increasing interest in global health teaching among medical schools and their students. Schools in the UK and internationally are considering the best structure, methods and content of global health courses. Academic work in this area, however, has tended to either be normative (specifying what global health teaching ought to look like) or descriptive (of a particular intervention, new module, elective, etc.).MethodsWhile a number of studies have explored student perspectives on global health teaching, these have often relied on tools such as questionnaires that generate little in-depth evidence. This study instead used qualitative methods to explore medical student perspectives on global health in the context of a new global health module established in the core medical curriculum at a UK medical school.ResultsFifth year medical students participated in a structured focus group session and semi-structured interviews designed to explore their knowledge and learning about global health issues, as well as their wider perspectives on these issues and their relevance to professional development. While perspectives on global health ranged from global health 'advocate' to 'sceptic', all of the students acknowledged the challenges of prioritising global health within a busy curriculum.ConclusionsStudents are highly alert to the diverse epistemological issues that underpin global health. For some students, such interdisciplinarity is fundamental to understanding contemporary health and healthcare. For others, global health is merely a topic of geographic relevance. Furthermore, some students appeared to accept global health as a specialist area only relevant to professionals working overseas, while others considered it to be an essential part of working in the globalised world and therefore relevant to all medical professionals. Students also clearly noted that including 'soft' subjects and more discursive approaches to teaching and learning often sits awkwardly in a programme where 'harder' forms of knowledge and didactic methods tend to dominate. This suggests that more work needs to be done to explain the relevance of global health to medical students at the very beginning of their studies.

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Project description:BACKGROUND: It has been suggested that medical students wish to focus their learning in psychiatry on general skills that are applicable to all doctors. This study seeks to establish what aspects of psychiatry students perceive to be relevant to their future careers and what psychiatric knowledge and skills they consider to be important. It is relevant to consider whether these expectations about learning needs vary prior to and post-placement in psychiatry. To what extent these opinions should influence curriculum development needs to be assessed. METHODS: A questionnaire was distributed to medical students before they commenced their psychiatry placement and after they had completed it. The questionnaire considered the relevance of psychiatry to their future careers, the relevance of particular knowledge and skills, the utility of knowledge of psychiatric specialties and the utility of different settings for learning psychiatry. RESULTS: The students felt skills relevant to all doctors, such as assessment of suicide risk, were more important than more specialist psychiatric skills, such as the management of schizophrenia. They felt that knowledge of how psychiatric illnesses present in general practice was important and it was a useful setting in which to learn psychiatry. They thought that conditions that are commonly seen in the general hospital are important and that liaison psychiatry was useful. CONCLUSION: Two ways that medical students believe their teaching can be made more relevant to their future careers are highlighted in this study. Firstly, there is a need to focus on scenarios which students will commonly encounter in their initial years of employment. Secondly, psychiatry should be better integrated into the overall curriculum, with the opportunity for teaching in different settings. However, when developing curricula the need to listen to what students believe they should learn needs to be balanced against the necessity of teaching the fundamentals and principles of a speciality.

Project description:BackgroundResearch engagement plays an integral role in developing clinicians that practice effective, evidence-based medicine. Research participation by clinicians, however, is declining. Given the link between research during medical school and future research output, promotion of medical student research is one avenue by which this shortage can be addressed. Student research attitudes and participation in Australia are not well-documented in the literature. This study therefore aims to investigate research practices, motivators, and barriers amongst Australian medical students in order to determine whether there is a need for further integration of research within Australian medical school curriculums.MethodsA cross-sectional study design was used to explore research experience and attitudes, as well as the enablers and barriers to research amongst students enrolled in all years of the five-year medical course at Monash University. A questionnaire was created by combining questions from several surveys on medical student research and comprised Likert scales, multiple choice options and free-text responses assessing research experience, attitudes, motivators, and barriers.ResultsSeven hundred and four respondents (69.4% female; survey response rate 36.7%) reported variable research experience and interest. Less than half of the cohort (n = 296; 44.9%) had contributed to a research project. Increasing employability for specialty training programs was the primary motivating factor (n = 345; 51.9%) for pursuing research, with only 20.5% (n = 136) citing an interest in academia as a motivator. Time constraints (n = 460; 65.3%) and uncertainty surrounding how to find research opportunities (n = 449; 63.8%) were the most common barriers to research.ConclusionsMedical students at Monash University are interested in but have limited experience with research. Students are, however, primarily motivated by the prospect of increasing employability for specialist training; medical schools should therefore focus on encouraging intrinsic motivation for pursuing research. Greater integration of research education and opportunities within medical school curricula may also be required to provide students with the skills necessary to both pursue research and practice evidence-based medicine.

Dataset Information

Leadership and management in the undergraduate medical curriculum: a qualitative study of students' attitudes and opinions at one UK medical school.

Objective

Design

Participants

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Leadership and management in the undergraduate medical curriculum: a qualitative study of students' attitudes and opinions at one UK medical school.

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