title: Themes and characteristics of medical students' self-identified clerkship learning goals: a quasi-statistical qualitative study.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Investigators sought to clarify the characteristics of students' self-identified learning goals.
  
  
  METHODS
  Goals collected from two schools were categorized into content themes and as "specific" or "general" qualitatively. Associations between learner characteristics and the distributions of goals were analyzed quantitatively.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Investigators obtained 879 goals from 290 students. Clinical skills were most frequently identified (89%), followed by medical knowledge (44%), career choice (17%), and attitudinal goals (15%). Within clinical skills, 12 subcategories emerged. Improving oral presentations and critical-thinking ability were more common during the first six months (15% versus 7%, P = .05; 16% versus 8%, P = .04), whereas management skills dominated during the second half of the academic year (18% versus 31%, P = .01). Half of students (n = 146; 50%) listed only "general" goals, and the specificity did not increase over time.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Students' main goal was acquiring clinical skills. Their focus within clinical skills shifted to more advanced skills but remained nonspecific.
authors.affiliation: Collaborative Inpatient Medicine Service Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, 5200 Eastern Avenue, MFL West 6F, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA. htorok1@jhmi.edu
authors.forename: Haruka M
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Torok
authors.forename: Dario
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Torre
authors.forename: D Michael
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Elnicki
mesh_terms: D002982:Clinical Clerkship; D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D013337:Students, Medical