An Undergraduate Health Care Experience Course Increases Confidence and Improves Student Understanding of Health Care Careers

Abstract

Increasing the health care work force is critical to underserved communities. Unfortunately, students in these areas lack accessibility to the clinical experiences needed to get an introductory understanding of careers in health care. Therefore, a health care experience (HCE) course was created for undergraduate students that included didactic training, active learning exercises, and coordinated shadowing experiences. To evaluate the effect of the HCE on student interest in science, health care, and rural health a study was performed on HCE participants. This study assessed student background, interest in health care, and plans for future careers in underserved settings. Students who enrolled in the HCE demonstrated high interest in science, health care, and rural health. Evaluation of student reflections indicated students attained novel learning, gained insights, and recognized the importance of communication. The HCE course students exhibited amplified confidence in HCEs and had a significant increase in understanding of health care compared with a control group of students who had not completed the HCE. Undergraduate institutions can include courses like the HCE into curricula to increase accessibility to career experiences for students interested in health care careers.

FIGURE 1.

Student responses to items related to confidence in understanding of health care careers and to confidence in HCE. Panels A and B indicate response distributions from the Pre–Post course surveys in 2021 and 2022. Panels C and D indicate student response distributions from the 2023 cross-sectional survey comparing students who had completed the HCE course responses to a comparison group. **** Discoveries using the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed rank and multiple comparison test (P value < 0.0001); ** Discovery using the Mann-Whitney U test with multiple comparisons (P value < 0.01); Abbreviations: CG = comparison group; HCE = Health Care Experience; n.d. = not discovered (P value > 0.05).