What do reflective writings of clinical year students say to medical educators?; a qualitative study

ABSTRACT

It is aimed to reveal the concepts and values on undergraduate medical education within the clinical students’ reflective writings, and to reveal what the students’ suggestions are to improve medical education in their reflective writings. This is a qualitative study, and the reflective writings of the 5th year students were examined. Qualitative document analysis method was used to evaluate and interpret the data to reveal meaning, gain understanding and develop empirical knowledge. As a result of the content analysis of 192 reflective writings obtained from the students, 8 themes were extracted. Themes covering many important concepts such as self-regulated learning, professional concerns, health literacy, problems related to professional ethical values, effective communication challenges, emotional challenges, limitations in clinical training have emerged. Subjects revealed from reflective writings give medical educators important clues about which topics should be developed in medical education. We think that analyzing reflective writings at regular intervals in the evaluation processes of integrated reflection training programs will provide important data to medical educators on development of undergraduate medical education. Therefore, students’ reflective writing can be an important tool for the development of the curriculum.

KEYWORDS:

• Reflective writing
• reflection
• undergraduate medical education
• document analysis
• curriculum

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Yasin Turan for his valuable editing on our manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Role of the funding source

The authors declared that this study has received no financial support.

Ethics committee approval

Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the regional ethics committee with document number 24,237,859–833. Participants were informed about the purpose of the study and their consent was obtained.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Selçuk Akturan

Selçuk Akturan is an assistant professor at Department of Medical Education, Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon, Turkey. He is still a PhD(c) student of Marmara University Institute of Health Science, Istanbul, Turkey.

Bilge Tuncel

Bilge Delibalta, M.D., Assistant Professor at Department of Medical Education, Karadeniz Technical University.

Yasemin Güner

Yasemin Güner is lecturer for Karadeniz Technical University, Faculty of Medicine. She is a PhD student in nursing. She is interested in nursing education, surgical nursing, mikro learning, medical education.

Ayşenur Duman Dilbaz

Ayşenur Duman Dilbaz is a member at Department of Medical Education in Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon, Turkey. She is a family medicine specialist, and she is a PhD student in Medical Education at Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey.

Melek Üçüncüoğlu

Melek Üçüncüoğlu is a nurse specialist at Department of Medical Education in Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon, Turkey. She is also a PhD student of Department of Business Administration, Management Organization in Avrasya University, Tabzon, Turkey.

Canan Ayazoğlu

Canan AYAZOĞLU ÜSTÜN is a researcher working as an administrative staff in Karadeniz Technical University, Faculty of Medicine. She is also a postgraduate student at Department of Educational Administration and Supervision in Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey.