Background: Engagement in scholarly activity (clinical vignette, conference presentations, publications etc.) is a fundamental requirement for trainees in medical education. We studied the impact of point intervention – clinical vignette workshop (CVW) to write a Clinical Vignettes (CV) for fourth year medical students at author’s institution.
Methods: All fourth year medical students enrolled in internal medicine electives were sent a 14 item baseline anonymous questionnaire survey (pretest) to assess barriers, attitude and practice towards writing a CV for a conference. Likert scale was used to assess comfort level of participants and support available for writing a CV. A hands-on interactive CVW was conducted for the participants to improve the basic and advanced writing skills. A post workshop survey (post test) was sent 3 weeks later to assess the impact of the intervention and explore further measures as suggested by the participants. For statistical analysis, t tests was used for continuous variables and chi-square test for categorical variables using SPSS ver 22.0
Results: Pre intervention response rate was 46% (n=27 out of 58), 60% (16/27) were females. 70% participants were not at all or slightly comfortable with writing CV, while 26% were moderately comfortable and only n=1 was extremely comfortable. Only 22% (6/27) had submitted CV in the past; of which half had submitted upto 2 CV. 11%(3/27) reported some existing support for writing CV. Most common barriers were: Difficulty in identifying an interesting case (74%), Lack of mentorship (67%), Inability to organize CV (62%), difficulty with submission process (52%); lack of time 37%. Post intervention response rate was 36% (n=21/58), 57% were females. 23% (5/21) were slightly comfortable or not all comfortable (P<0.001 vs pretest); 38%(n=8) were extremely or very comfortable; and 38% (n= 8) (P<0.001 vs pretest). 71% (n=15) agreed or strongly agreed about the support with writing CV (P<0.001 vs pretest).
Conclusions:
Definite knowledge gaps due to lack of any supportive framework in medical scholl curriculum were identified. Educational intervention in the form of interactive workshop addressing the basics of writing clinical vignettes can improve medical student’s comfort level and augment scientific production. Sustained impact of such interventions would be expected with incorporation of such interventions in the usual curriculum.