Background: Third year medical student in their internal medicine clerkship rotate with the resident teaching services as well as resident uncovered hospitalist teams.When assigned to a hospitalist service for their internal medicine clerkship, the student is typically paired one to one with a hospitalist physician in general internal medicine.In this study we surveyed third year medical students who participated in a hospitalist rotation about their experience in the rotation.
Methods: A Qualtrics survey system was used to query third year medical students who had participated in their internal medicine rotation between July 2017 and February 2018 at the
Medical College of Wisconsin. Only students who had completed at least one month with a hospitalist were asked to participate in the study. Survey questions were largely multiple choice but allowed for free-written comment submission as well.
Results: Fifty six third year medical students who had rotated with hospitalist between July 2017-february 2018 were surveyed. Fifty responses were obtained from these students.
Twenty eight students (57% of responders) thought that patients with fewer comorbidities was ideal for teaching and learning while 14 (29%) considered patients with multiple comorbid conditions ideal .
When rounding, 20 students (41%) preferred to round on their own patients while 25 (51%) preferred rounding on all patients . Three of the four comments for this question suggested a mixture of rounding on the students’ patients as well as patients who would be educational for the student to see as well .
Twenty-three (47%) of the respondents stated that they were given an opportunity to be involved in a scholarly project with their faculty hospitalist; 26 students (53%) had not (Table 1). Barriers to learning were most commonly considered to be variability in individual hospitalists’ rounding times/methods with 19 (39%) of students reporting this followed by 13 students (27%) reporting a lack of sufficient time for teaching, 3 students (6%) a busy service and 2 students (4%) responding that a barrier was “no structured rotation”. Four responders selected “other” and their comments are seen in Table 2.
96% of students felt that they were provided the opportunity to work closely with their attending. 82% found their involvement in direct patient care as a benefit of the rotation. Only about 51% of students felt that they gained experience in clinical documentation in this rotation.
Conclusions: The present survey supports the need to develop a structured rotation and incorporate innovation in current curriculum to address the barriers perceived by the medical students. In short, our study findings suggest that additional institutional resources should be dedicated for making the medicine clerkship rotation more educational.