Give It to Me Straight Doc: A Medical Student Perspective on Effective Goal-Oriented Clinical Education

Abstract

The clinical years of medical school are a time when students navigate a new learning environment. Due to inexperience, discordance may exist between veteran attendings and students who do not have their bearings in this new setting. We propose a solution to strengthen the clinician-student relationship by promoting a culture of goal-oriented clinical education via a two-pronged approach. First, standardized learning objectives should be established for each clinical rotation. Second, and arguably more importantly, students should create individualized goals to complement these objectives and further their personal educational interests. Once a culture of goal-oriented clinical education is implemented, we believe students will navigate their clinical years with increased confidence and competence. In this piece, we discuss our personal attitudes toward why clinicians and students should set goals, how they can set them, and what these goals should include. Once goals are established, feedback must be provided to students to continue the learning process. This comes in the form of comments from supervising preceptors who focus on areas of interest identified by the student, as well as from the results of standardized assessments. We passionately believe that together, the synergism of goal setting, feedback, and assessment creates a perfect mixture conducive to the formation of a positive learning environment.

Keywords: assessment; clinical learning environment; clinical medical education; feedback; goal setting.