Effectiveness of a Clinical Intervention for MD/PhD Students Re-entering Medical School

Abstract

Background and Purpose: For MD/PhD students, the transition to medical school following graduate research can be difficult. We developed a clinical intervention, the Clinical Preceptorship Program (CPP), for MD/PhD students at Vanderbilt to ease the transition to the core clinical clerkship year (the 3rd medical year) following graduate training. In this study, we determined whether the CPP prepared MD/PhD students adequately for medical school reentry. Methods: Clerkship grades were obtained for 680 medical students and 50 MD/PhD students for academic years 2004–2010. A student's unpaired t test was used to analyze differences between group grades. Results: We did not detect significant differences in the grades of the MD versus MD/PhD students. No differences in individual clerkships were detected with the exception of the Surgery clerkship. Conclusions: These data suggest that the CPP intervention was successful in preparing MD/PhD students for the core clerkship year. Such a clinical intervention can be an effective preparation for MD/PhD students returning to medical school.

Acknowledgments

All authors contributed to the design of the study. JLB collected and performed initial analysis of the data and wrote the first draft of the paper. MD performed additional data analysis, contributed to the interpretation of the results, and edited the paper. TSD designed the study, contributed to data analysis, and edited the paper.We thank the outstanding Vanderbilt clinical preceptors in the Clinical Preceptorship Program. In particular, we acknowledge the contributions of the Drs. Amy Fleming, Bill Maynard, and Beth Ann Sastre, who comprised the team that revised the CPP curriculum, as well as preceptors Drs. Jeanine Engel, Waldon Garriss, Joseph Gigante, Veronica Gunn, Paul Hain, Matthew Miller, Barron Patterson, David Raiford, and Elizabeth Rice. We thank Dr. Emil Petrusa and Tepparit Wiphatphumiprates from the Vanderbilt Office for Teaching and Learning in Medicine for data release. We appreciate the comments and suggestions provided by Dr. Kim Lomis, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Medical Education, and Jacob VanHouten, MSTP graduate student in Biomedical Informatics.