Research in Medical Education

A collaborative investigation of physician-mentors’ experiences and perspectives on group-based mentorship programs at three medical schools in Norway and Canada

Researchers at the Faculty of Medicine in Bergen are collaborating with the University of Troms and McGill University (in Montreal, Canada) on a study that deals with the mentoring program in the medical schools.

At all three study sites, medical students are included in various mentoring programs. However, the mentoring arrangements are quite different and the project therefore focuses on the mentors as a key resource.

How are the mentor groups run at the various study sites? How do the mentors experience their role as a mentor, and what motivates them to be mentors?

The research project uses both questionnaires and qualitative research interviews to collect data on these questions. The project will generate important information about how mentoring arrangements, in different contexts, should be run and facilitated to ensure stable and good learning processes for the students.

Relevant article: Group mentorship for undergraduate medical students-a systematic review

Project Manager: Edvin Schei, Professor, IGS.

In this PhD-project we aim to reach a deeper understanding of how identity is formed in medical students and doctors. We are interested in their narratives and how they use those narratives to make sense of themselves and their experiences. We have previously published two articles:

1. Threshold conceps in group-based mentoring and implications for faculty development: A qualitative analysis

2. The liminal landscape of mentoring – Stories of physicians becoming mentors  

MedUt participants: Eivind Valestrand (PhD-candidate) and Edvin Schei (supervisor).

PROFMED aims to improve medical students’ hospital placement learning and support the development of a professional doctor’s identity. This is done by a) systematically preparing students for workplace participation, and b) educating hospital doctors who interact with students at a local teaching hospital (Haugesund hospital).

The project addresses fourth-year medical students in Bergen, who do their placements in surgery and internal medicine in four different hospitals. Intervention a) consists of student-active activities to prepare students intellectually and affectively for hospital placement, using learning activities to provide information and support reflection. Intervention b) is a collaborative, locally anchored faculty development project targeting all relevant physicians at Haugesund hospital, offering a program for developing reflexive supervision skills, aiming at long-term learning environment changes.

(Link to PROFMED - Medical students' professional identity formation during hospital practice | Enhet for læring | UiBE)

The project is funded by HK-dir – the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills.

MedUt participants: Edvin Schei, Eivind Valestrand, Knut Eirik Eliassen

This study explored through qualitative analysis of focus group interviews how senior medical students experience and react to shame during clinical placements. Available from: Shame in medical clerkship: “You just feel like dirt under someone’s shoe” | Perspectives on Medical Education (springer.com)

MedUt participants: Edvin Schei, Beth Whelan

In a new analysis of the interview data from the shame study, we explored students’ narratives of feeling alienated and losing agency as learners resulting from lack of explicit or implicit greeting and welcoming behaviour during clinical placements.

Manuscript: Alienation in the teaching hospital: How physician non-greeting behaviour impacts medical students’ learning and professional identity formation” by Valestrand EA, Whelan B, Eliassen KER, and Schei E, is submitted to Perspectives on Medical Education, Sept. 2023

MedUt participants: Eivind Valestrand, Knut Eirik Eliassen, Beth Whelan, Edvin Schei
 

The project contributes to ensure that medical education in Norway has a sufficient number of clinical placement sites in general practitioner offices, of good quality and with competent practice supervisors. The overall purpose is to recruit and train competent doctors for the general practice in the municipalities.

The PhD project  is about general practitioners (GPs) as supervisors for medical students in clinical placements at the GP office. In one study we conduct a cross-sectional questionnaire study to gather data on GPs’ willingness, needs, motivation and attitudes to host students to their surgeries. We also perform a qualitative interview study on students’ and GPs’ experiences with peer placement where two medical students are placed together in the clinical placement period”.

MedUt participants: Steinar Hunskår (Head of the project, principal investigator, supervisor), Gunnar T. Bondevik (Practice Coordinator, supervisor), Julie S. Knutsen (Ph.D.-candidate), Knut Eirik Eliassen (Project manager), Karen Haugvaldstad (consultant).

More information is available from: Flere praksisplasser og bedre veiledning for medisinstudenter på fastlegekontorene (FRONESIS) - Alrek (alrekhelseklynge.no)

Early patient contact (PASKON) is a mandatory course for first year medical students in Bergen, teaching students about patient-centered medicine. PASKON is part of “The professional column” of the curriculum at the medical school (Profesjonalitetssøylen | Det medisinske fakultet | UiB).  

MedUt currently leads two different research projects in PASKON:

• Patients as teachers, together with Winny Ang, University of Antwerp (BE).

• Student supervisors and feedback competency, together with medical student Anna Victoria Flankegård.

MedUt participants: Knut Eirik Eliassen, Eivind Valestrand, Julie S. Knutsen.

Please see this link for information about group members from Canada.