A short transitional course can help medical students prepare for clinical learning.
OBJECTIVE
Despite the move toward integrated 4-year medical school curricula, many medical schools still offer a "2+2" curriculum divided into preclinical and clinical phases. These phases represent distinct learning environments that require different learning skills. To prepare students for learning in the clinical environment of the second 2 years, many medical schools offer transitional experiences before the third-year clerkships. Few of these transitional courses have published evaluations, and there is no consensus on the ideal content. In this paper, we provide evaluation and content validity data on a 2-week intensive clinical transition course for beginning third-year medical students.


METHODS
A multidisciplinary team designed, implemented, and evaluated a 2-week transition course. Students indicated through surveys how prepared they felt for 18 clinical skills. We analyzed pre- and post-survey data using a Wilcoxen rank sum test and compared current to prior students using a chi-square analysis.


RESULTS
Students felt more prepared for 16 of 18 skills after the transitional course and for 14 of 18 skills compared to historical controls.


CONCLUSIONS
A transitional course based on common skills is relevant to students' clerkship experiences and can increase students' self-reported preparedness for the clinical years of medical school.
Department of Family Medicine, Kansas University Medical Center, Kansas City 66160, USA. hchumley@kumc.edu
Heidi
H
Chumley
Cynthia
C
Olney
Richard
R
Usatine
Alison
A
Dobbie
D002982:Clinical Clerkship / Q000458:organization & administration*; D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000592:standards*; D003479:Curriculum; D003625:Data Collection; D006801:Humans; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*; D014481:United States