Research tasks as part of the general practice clerkship in undergraduate medical education – a pilot project on feasibility and acceptance

Abstract

Objective: To assess the integration of a research task performed by students during their two-week clerkship in general practice. Methods: Students were assigned to interview five patients with coronary heart disease using a standardised questionnaire focusing on potential interaction of medications with statins. Acceptance and feasibility was assessed by means of a questionnaire survey of teaching physicians (n = 20) and students (n = 20). Results: According to most teaching physicians and students the recruitment of patients during the two-week clerkship was possible, and the practice work flow was not disturbed by the project. Both groups considered the research task on the documentation of potential drug interactions with statins as suitable. According to the teaching physicians the project had a learning effect for the students. In contrast, the students graded their learning effect less highly between ‘satisfactory’ and ‘sufficient’. The overall assessment of the project by the students was on average ‘satisfactory’ and differed from the assessment by the teaching physicians (‘good’). Conclusions: Adequate informing of students and participating physicians about the nature of the project and presenting preliminary results of the data in a plenary session at the end of the clerkship are essential for the acceptance of such projects.

Keywords:

• Undergraduate medical education
• research competencies
• general practice

Acknowledgements

The authors thank all the participants. The present work was financed by the resources of the Institute of General Practice and Interprofessional Care, and the Department of Clinical Pharmacology, University Hospital Tübingen.

The authors thank Paul Kahle, MD (USA) for the language check of the first (not revised) version of manuscript.