gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: Many undergraduate curricula provide no or little learning formats for the reflection of physicians’ professional roles, especially for the work-up of experiences during internships. In order to provide an opportunity for this, we sought to implement a respective learning format directly after the internship year (5th year), in the 6th year of the medical curriculum at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Methods: Following literature review, three working group rounds of expert discussions were performed involving all stakeholders. Written notes were circulated after each discussion to stimulate the following round. Subsequently, a writing group prepared a proposal for critical appraisal by the working group.

Results: The working group decided on a blend of learning formats including (a) workshops (n=6; duration 2 hours; 16-18 students), (b) lectures / panel discussions (n=4; 2 hours; total cohort), and (c) self-directed student groups (n=3; 2 hours; 6 students) to be held weekly over one semester. Workshops were to be led by highly experienced clinicians, lectures on topics around different physicians’ roles were to be held by declared experts in their fields. For the workshops each student had to submit one specific vignette of a “difficult case” from his own internship time. A “difficult case” was specified as a case which could not be solved by the use of typical medical algorithms (CanMEDS role “medical expert”). The suite of workshops was composed around the cases which had been submitted to the clinician educators in advance. During the term each student was to enrich his case vignette by the concepts, ideas and potential solutions derived from workshops, self-directed student groups, and lecture formats. The final vignette would serve as formative assessment tool.

Discussion: During the autumn term in 2014 this learning format has been implemented, and first evaluation results will be available at RIME conference 2015.