Becoming a physician: students' creative projects in a third-year IM clerkship.

Full Abstract

PURPOSE:
Medical educators have only limited understanding of how integrating humanities-based components into standard curricula contributes to the medical students' professionalism. This study qualitatively analyzed how students used a creative-project assignment during their third-year internal medicine clerkships to explore various aspects of their professional development.

METHOD:
A total of 277 students from three consecutive classes (1999-2002) at the University of California, Irvine, College of Medicine each completed a creative project reflecting on a particularly problematic or meaningful illness-related incident. Process and content analyses of the 221 projects submitted for analysis were performed.

RESULTS:
Students' projects employed a wide range of formats, tones, and styles to examine the process of socialization into medicine. Within this framework, their work tended to explore issues such as the proper relationship of medical students to patients, coming to terms with death and dying, understanding the patient's experience of illness, and coping with professional and personal stress.

CONCLUSION:
A creative-projects course component can be a valuable adjunct to traditional clerkship activities in helping students to reflect on the process of becoming a physician.

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Author information

Author/s: Rucker, Lloyd (L); Shapiro, Johanna (J);

Affiliation: Department of Medicine, University of California, Irvine, College of Medicine, USA.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

Journal: Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges (Acad Med), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Apr; vol 78 (issue 4) : pp 391-7

Dates: Created 2003/04/14; Completed 2003/05/07; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12691972, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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