Development and use of an instrument adapted to assess the clinical skills learning environment in the pre-clinical years.

Background: The Communication, Curriculum, and Culture (C3) instrument is a well-established survey for measuring the professional learning climate or hidden curriculum in the clinical years of medical school. However, few instruments exist for assessing professionalism in the pre-clinical years. We adapted the C3 instrument and assessed its utility during the pre-clinical years at two U.

Surgery clerkship evaluations drive improved professionalism.

Purpose: To determine whether a brief student survey can differentiate among third-year clerkship student's professionalism experiences and whether sharing specific feedback with surgery faculty and residents can lead to improvements.

Methods: Medical students completed a survey on professionalism at the conclusion of each third-year clerkship specialty rotation during academic years 2007-2010.

Results: Comparisons of survey items in 2007-2008 revealed significantly lower ratings for the surgery clerkship on both Excellence (F = 10.

Medical student perceptions of a behavioural and social science curriculum.

Background In 2006, Oregon Health & Science University began implementing changes to better integrate mental health and social science into the curriculum by addressing the Institute of Medicine's (IOM's) 2004 recommendation for the inclusion of six behavioural and social science (BSS) domains: health policy and economics, patient behaviour, physician-patient interaction, mind-body interactions, physician role and behaviour, and social and cultural issues.Methods We conducted three focus groups with a purposive sample of 23 fourth-year medical students who were exposed to 4 years of the new curriculum. Students were asked to reflect upon the adequacy of their BSS training specifically as it related to the six IOM domains.