Medical student engagement and leadership within a new learning community

BMC Medical Education

Research Article

Satish Misra¹  Mark Bicket¹  Scott M Wright¹  Robert Shochet¹ 

[1] Division of General Internal Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA;

关键词: Medical School;    Medical Student;    Faculty Member;    Leadership Role;    Learning Community;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6920-10-20

 received in 2009-06-12, accepted in 2010-02-26,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundMany medical schools are establishing learning communities to foster cohesion among students and to strengthen relationships between students and faculty members. Emerging learning communities require nurturing and attention; this represents an opportunity wherein medical students can become involved as leaders. This study sought to understand issues related to active involvement among students who chose to become highly engaged in a newly developed learning community.MethodsBetween April and June 2008, 36 students who assumed leadership roles within the Colleges Program were queried electronically with open-ended questions about their engagement. Qualitative analysis of the written responses was independently performed by two investigators; coding was compared for agreement. Content analysis identified major themes.Results35 students (97%) completed the questionnaire. Motives that emerged as reasons for getting involved included: endorsing the need for the program; excitement with the start-up; wanting to give back; commitment to institutional excellence; and collaboration with talented peers and faculty. Perceived benefits were grouped under the following domains: connecting with others; mentoring; learning new skills; and recognition. The most frequently identified drawbacks were the time commitment and the opportunity costs. Ideas for drawing medical students into new endeavors included: creating defined roles; offering a breadth of opportunities; empowering students with responsibility; and making them feel valued.ConclusionsMedical students were drawn to and took on leadership roles in a medical school curricular innovation. This example may prove helpful to others hoping to engage students as leaders in learning communities at their schools or those wishing to augment student involvement in other programs.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Bicket et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.