Unacceptable Behaviors Towards Health Professional Clinical Students: Protocol For a Mixed-Methods Study.

Background And Aims: Previous studies describe the occurrence of unacceptable behaviors reported by students pursuing health professional education in Aotearoa, New Zealand and across the globe. These include, but are not limited to, experiences of verbal abuse, sexual harassment, and discrimination based on race/ethnicity, religious beliefs, gender, and sexual orientation. University of Otago teaching staff across the various health professional programs often receive anecdotal reports of these phenomena from their clinical students.

Failure to fail: Fear of retribution or a response to neglecting the learner?

Rudland and Rennie comment on Swails et al.'s observation that staff are failing fewer learners, offering reflection on the impact neglecting a learner may have on educator decisions if the failure to fail phenomenon is considered.

Health professional education and practice in preventing and controlling infections in New Zealand: a review to inform strategies for enhancing practitioner competencies and patient safety.

Objective: Quality assurance for reducing infections is a key objective of the WHO's global action plan targeting antimicrobial resistance, yet no studies have employed a multifaceted approach to review health professional education and practice in infection prevention and control (IPC). This study completed such a review.

Methods And Analysis: New Zealand medical and nursing curricula were analysed for IPC-related teaching and assessment.

Medical student learner neglect in the clinical learning environment: Applying Glaser's theoretical model.

Introduction: Learner neglect is a relatively new concept in education, and no suitable framework for its exploration has been devised. The aim of this study was to determine whether an existing framework, Glaser's framework of child neglect, could be applied to learner neglect in clinical learning environments. This was a retrospective analysis of data obtained as part of a related study.

The employment gap: the relationship between medical student career choices and the future needs of the New Zealand medical workforce.

Aims: To determine the career decision intentions of graduating doctors, and the relationship between these intentions and the predicted medical workforce needs in New Zealand in 10 years' time.

Methods: A workforce forecasting model developed by the Ministry of Health (MOH) has been used to predict the proportion of doctors required in each medical specialty in 2028 in New Zealand. The future work intentions of recently graduated doctors at the Universities of Auckland and Otago were collected from the Medical Student Outcomes Data (MSOD), and compared with these predicted needs.

The stress paradox: how stress can be good for learning.

Context: This article explores the myth that stress is always bad for learning. The term "stress" has been narrowed by habitual use to equate with the negative outcome of distress; this article takes an alternative view that ultimately rejects the myth that demonises stress. The avoidance of distress is important, but a broader view of stress as something that can have either positive or negative outcomes is considered.

Challenging feedback myths: Values, learner involvement and promoting effects beyond the immediate task.

Context: Research suggests that feedback in the health professions is less useful than we would like. In this paper, we argue that feedback has become reliant on myths that perpetuate unproductive rituals. Feedback often resembles a discrete episode of an educator "telling," rather than an active and iterative involvement of the learner in a future-facing process.

Developing New Zealand's medical workforce: realising the potential of longitudinal career tracking.

For over a decade, the Medical Schools Outcomes Database and Longitudinal Tracking Project (MSOD) has collected data from medical students in Australia and New Zealand. This project aims to explore how individual student background or attributes might interact with curriculum or early postgraduate training to affect eventual career choice and location. In New Zealand, over 4,000 students have voluntarily provided information at various time points, and the project is at a stage where some firm conclusions are starting to be drawn.

Identifying medical students at risk of underperformance from significant stressors.

Background: Stress is associated with poorer academic performance but identifying vulnerable students is less clear. A series of earthquakes and disrupted learning environments created an opportunity to explore the relationships among stress, student factors, support and academic performance within a medical course.

Methods: The outcomes were deviations from expected performances on end of year written and clinical examinations.

Medical faculty opinions of peer tutoring.

Context And Objectives: Peer tutoring is a well-researched and established method of learning defined as 'a medical student facilitating the learning of another medical student'. While it has been adopted in many medical schools, other schools may be reluctant to embrace this approach. The attitude of the teaching staff, responsible for organizing and or teaching students in an undergraduate medical course to formal peer teaching will affect how it is introduced and operationalized.

A student-centred feedback model for educators.

Background: Effective feedback is instrumental to effective learning. Current feedback models tend to be educator driven rather than learner-centred, with the focus on how the supervisor should give feedback rather than on the role of the learner in requesting and responding to feedback.

Context: An alternative approach emphasising the theoretical principles of student-centred and self-regulated learning is offered, drawing upon the literature and also upon the experience of the authors.

Comparison of UMAT scores and GPA in prediction of performance in medical school: a national study.

Context: Medical schools continue to seek robust ways to select students with the greatest aptitude for medical education, training and practice. Tests of general cognition are used in combination with markers of prior academic achievement and other tools, although their predictive validity is unknown. This study compared the predictive validity of the Undergraduate Medicine and Health Sciences Admission Test (UMAT), the admission grade point average (GPA), and a combination of both, on outcomes in all years of two medical programmes.

How well do selection tools predict performance later in a medical programme?

The choice of tools with which to select medical students is complex and controversial. This study aimed to identify the extent to which scores on each of three admission tools (Admission GPA, UMAT and structured interview) predicted the outcomes of the first major clinical year (Y4) of a 6 year medical programme. Data from three student cohorts (n = 324) were analysed using regression analyses.

The clinical skills experience of rural immersion medical students and traditional hospital placement students: a student perspective.

Background: Recent decades have seen an international trend for the development of undergraduate medical programmes in rural locations. These have been considered educationally equivalent alternatives to traditional hospital-based programmes. A pilot Rural Medical Immersion Programme (RMIP) was launched at the University of Otago.

Joining the dots: conditional pass and programmatic assessment enhances recognition of problems with professionalism and factors hampering student progress.

Background: Programmatic assessment that looks across a whole year may contribute to better decisions compared with those made from isolated assessments alone. The aim of this study is to describe and evaluate a programmatic system to handle student assessment results that is aligned not only with learning and remediation, but also with defensibility. The key components are standards based assessments, use of "Conditional Pass", and regular progress meetings.

Moving a formative test from a paper-based to a computer-based format. A student viewpoint.

Background: A paper-based test was changed to a computer-based format. Students completed the test over a 2-week period on any computer with internet access.

Aim: To determine the acceptability to students of the computer-based format, whether resources were used by students during the test, the value of receiving an immediate score, positive aspects of the computer format and areas for improvement.

Setting up new learning environments in regional and rural areas.

The shortage of doctors in New Zealand, especially in regional and rural areas, together with the recognition that medical students need to learn in a variety of contexts has led to new learning environments being developed. This paper describes some of the key factors that have led to the successful implementation of year-long regional and rural clinical placements for medical students in New Zealand.

Maximising learning through effective supervision.

This article targets supervisors and their important role in maximising learning of novice practitioners. The article draws on current research to highlight the importance of clinical supervision and the roles and tasks of the supervisor. Some of the challenges of supervision and how the supervisor can be supported are also discussed.

The good apprentice in medical education.

This paper targets both current apprentices and their supervisors drawing on current research to answer the following questions. What is apprenticeship and what are the key elements? What is a good apprentice and what can an intern or registrar do to assist their own learning and development? It takes a pragmatic approach and seeks to assist apprentices and their supervisors by attending closely to what is practicable, realistic, expedient and convenient; articulating this and laying it out as clearly as possible.

Rad-Path: integrated anatomical pathology and radiology undergraduate tutorials.

Aims: The anatomical pathology tutorials for the fourth year of our undergraduate medical course at the University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand, were re-developed with the aim of promoting more active participation and application of learning by the students in their small group work. Radiology was integrated into half of the pathology tutorials with the objective of enhancing learning of both disciplines. The tutorials were designed to be easy to run for the tutors, who are mostly hospital-based staff.