A Creative Medical Investigation: Bridging the Soft Skill Gap

ABSTRACT

The refinement of soft skills is essential to the success of athletic training students. Yet, more work is needed to identify desirable educational techniques to support the progression of soft skills in athletic training education. The current study identified professional athletic training students’ (10 students; 21.2 ± 2.1 years) perceptions of the five-part creative medical investigation (CMI) and described how the CMI could contribute to clinical reasoning, collaboration, and reflection, along with integrating soft skills with hard skills. The consensual qualitative research (CQR) approach utilized semi-structured interviews after the five CMI parts. Three qualitative researchers conducted CQR analysis after all interviews were complete. The researchers independently coded the interview transcripts and met to triangulate common themes; member checks were conducted to validate the findings. A 10-month follow-up survey evaluated the long-term effects of the CMI on selected subdomains of clinical reasoning. Five themes were identified from the consensual qualitative analysis. This CMI (1) Facilitated clinical reasoning, (2) Encouraged collaboration and reflection, (3) Promoted soft and hard skill integration, (4) Improved student confidence, (5) Enjoyed by the students. The follow-up survey indicated that students agreed (4.1–4.5 out of 5) this CMI leads to improvement in clinical reasoning subdomains. The current CMI facilitated desirable soft skills and integrated soft skills with hard skills through an enjoyable experience. Thus, the CMI might be a desirable educational technique with long-term implications to support the progression of soft skills in health care education.

KEYWORDS:

• Mixed methods study
• consensual qualitative analysis
• educational advancement
• pedagogy
• case study

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. William “Bill” Pitney for his mentorship on this project and the Northern Illinois University College of Education.

Disclosure statement

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

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/24711616.2022.2113347

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by a Northern Illinois University College of Education [Dean’s Instructional Innovation Grant].