Background: Disseminating scholarly work is an important skill in academic medicine, but it’s not often taught in a systematic way. This may disadvantage students from underrepresented and underprivileged backgrounds who don’t have role models in the biomedical sciences. Writing a clinical vignette – defined as a patient-related case that has educational value to a wider audience – offers an accessible entry point to disseminating scholarly work. Presenting a clinical vignette during medical school can also play a role in a successful residency match (1). Per the NRMP, the mean number of “Abstracts, Presentations, and Publications” is higher for US allopathic medical school graduates who match (6.2) than those who remain unmatched (5.1) (2).
Purpose: To provide equal-opportunity coaching for 4th year medical students applying to Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, or Med-Peds residencies on identifying, submitting, and presenting a clinical case vignette.
Description: The curriculum includes four didactic sessions covering 1) identifying an appropriate case and obtaining consent, 2) writing the abstract, authorship issues, and team management, 3) creating and presenting a poster, and 4) disseminating work beyond a poster. Students are expected to create and submit an abstract, with the goal of receiving at least one acceptance prior to the ERAS application deadline. Those who do not already have a faculty mentor are paired with volunteer faculty from our Division of Hospital Medicine. Ten students completed the course in its first year, resulting in ten poster presentations at regional meetings (one awarded “best medical student poster”), one poster presentation and one oral presentation at national conferences, and two written publications. Nineteen students enrolled in the second year of the course, with eighteen regional poster presentations, two national poster presentations, and one written publication in process. Feedback from students and participating faculty has been very positive, with 100% of students rating the course as “Good” or “Excellent” on a five-point Likert scale.
Conclusions: This curriculum has successfully trained a group of medical students how to write and present clinical vignettes. Future considerations include whether to introduce sections of the material to students earlier in their medical school journey and how to scale the course to include a wider group of students.