Teaching medical students musculoskeletal examination skills: identifying barriers to learning and ways of overcoming them

Abstract

Objectives: To elicit the barriers to the effective teaching of musculoskeletal examination skills amongst medical students.

Methods: This was a qualitative study including six focus groups with specialities most often involved in delivering musculoskeletal clinical teaching: rheumatology, orthopaedics, general practice, and geriatrics.

Results: The main barriers to the delivery of effective clinical teaching included the lack of agreement on what to teach, lack of confidence in teaching amongst non‐musculoskeletal specialities, and poor communication between specialities.

Conclusions: There is a need to overcome the identified barriers if musculoskeletal clinical teaching to medical students is to be improved. In particular, there is a need to agree which examination skills medical students should learn.