‘It’s more like checking in with an old friend’: A qualitative study of medical students’ experiences with longitudinal coaches throughout medical school

Abstract

Purpose

Coaching in medical education facilitates learners’ growth and development through feedback, goal-setting and support. This study explored how coaching relationships evolve throughout medical school and the impact of longitudinal coaching relationships on medical students’ approach to feedback and goal setting in the clinical years.

Method

In this qualitative study using a constructivist paradigm, authors purposively sampled 15 senior medical students at University of California, San Francisco, to participate in individual semi-structured interviews (October–November 2021). The authors used an inductive approach to thematic analysis.

Results

The authors identified four themes: First, the student-coach relationship deepened over the course of medical school. Second, students identified factors that sustained and strengthened the student-coach relationship over time: a strong foundation to the relationship, the non-evaluative nature of the relationship, coach supportiveness and responsiveness, and coach knowledge of the institutional landscape. Third, coaches provided individualized advice, assessed trajectory, and guided feedback interpretation. Lastly, students applied skills of soliciting and responding to feedback and creating learning goals, originally learned through coaching experience.

Conclusions

Coaching relationships, grounded in trust, evolve to meet students’ changing needs as they grow into physicians. Students apply feedback and goal-setting skills learned with the coach in clinical settings with other supervisors.

Keywords:

• Medical education
• student development
• coach
• clinical teaching and learning
• feedback

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the Education Scholarship Conference (ESCape) at UCSF for their critique of the manuscript draft.

Data sharing

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, KEH. The data are not publicly available due to contents that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Geolocation information

This study was conducted in the United States.

Additional information

Funding

We used internal discretionary departmental funds for participant incentives.

Notes on contributors

Leslie Bernal Charondo

Leslie Bernal Charondo is a Urology resident, Department of Urology, University of California, Davis, Davis, California.

Leslie Sheu

Leslie Sheu is an internal medicine practitioner, Private Medical, Menlo Park, CA.

Brian M. Bakke

Brian M. Bakke is an Internal Medicine resident, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California.

Karen E. Hauer

Karen E. Hauer is associate dean for competency assessment and professional standards and professor, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California.