Medical Education 2011: 45: 1220–1229
Objectives Medical students must develop not only their professional identity but also inclusive social attitudes for effective medical practice in the future. ...This study explores the elements that contribute to medical students’ sense of professional identity and investigates the concept of social exclusivity and how this might relate to students’ development of their identity as medical professionals.
Methods The study is based on qualitative data gathered in telephone interviews with 13 medical students enrolled in Years 1 or 3 at an undergraduate medical school at a university in Australia. The questions were open‐ended and asked students about their experiences in medical school, sense of identity and social connections.
Results Two main components contributed to a strong sense of professional identity in medical students: professional inclusivity and social exclusivity. Students experienced professional inclusivity when they attended clinical placements and when they were treated as future medical professionals by lecturers, doctors and patients. Social exclusivity was demonstrated by participants’ perceptions of themselves as socially separate from non‐medical students and isolated from students in other disciplines. Students described a sense of peer unity and a shared sense of identity as medical students within the medical school.
Conclusions It is important to understand how students develop their sense of identity as medical professionals and the ways in which medical education and clinical placements can influence this professional identity. Although this study noted a very strong sense of social exclusivity in its findings, there were also high levels of intra‐discipline inclusivity. These results suggest that there is a reciprocal and reinforcing relationship between student experiences of professional inclusivity and social exclusivity that creates a defined sense of professional identity.
The self-identification of nursing students with the profession has been linked with a successful transition, from being a student to being a professional nurse. Although there is no empirical ...evidence, there are suggestions that students with high professional identity are more likely to persist and complete their studies in their chosen profession.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of a professional identity scale and to determine the relationship between professional identity and student retention in a large group of first year nursing students.
A survey design was used to examine the professional identity of first year nursing students, as measured by the Macleod Clark Professional Identity Scale (MCPIS-9). Baseline data obtained from the initial surveys were then compared with student drop-out rates 12months later.
Exploratory factor analysis of the MCPIS-9 yielded a one-component solution, accounting for 43.3% of the variance. All 9 items loaded highly on one component, ranging from 0.50 to 0.79. Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the MCPIS-9 was 0.83 and corrected item-total correlation values all scored well above the 0.3 cut-off. Students who: were females, had previous nursing-related vocational training, reported nursing as their first choice, or engaged in nursing-related paid work, had statistically significant higher professional identity scores. Using logistic regression analysis, students with high professional identity scores at baseline were more likely to be still enrolled in the nursing program at 12months, controlling for gender, language spoken at home and engagement in nursing-related employment. These results support the psychometric properties of the MCPIS-9.
Professional identity has a direct relationship with student retention in the nursing program. It is important to adequately measure professional identity in nursing students for the purpose of monitoring and identifying students who are at risk of leaving nursing programs.
Medical television programs offer students fictional representations of their chosen career. This study aimed to discover undergraduate medical students' viewing of medical television programs and ...students' perceptions of professionalism, ethics, realism and role models in the programs. The purpose was to consider implications for teaching strategies.
A medical television survey was administered to 386 undergraduate medical students across Years 1 to 4 at a university in New South Wales, Australia. The survey collected data on demographics, year of course, viewing of medical television programs, perception of programs' realism, depiction of ethics, professionalism and role models.
The shows watched by most students were House, Scrubs, and Grey's Anatomy, and students nominated watching 30 different medical programs in total. There was no statistical association between year of enrolment and perceptions of accuracy. The majority of students reported that friends or family members had asked them for their opinion on an ethical or medical issue presented on a program, and that they discussed ethical and medical matters with their friends. Students had high recall of ethical topics portrayed on the shows, and most believed that medical programs generally portrayed ideals of professionalism well.
Medical programs offer considerable currency and relevance with students and may be useful in teaching strategies that engage students in ethical lessons about practising medicine.
To compare health and science students' demographic characteristics and learning approaches across different disciplines, and to examine the relationship between learning approaches and academic ...performance.
While there is increasing recognition of a need to foster learning approaches that improve the quality of student learning, little is known about students' learning approaches across different disciplines, and their relationships with academic performance.
Prospective, correlational design.
Using a survey design, a total of 919 first year health and science students studying in a university located in the western region of Sydney from the following disciplines were recruited to participate in the study — i) Nursing: n=476, ii) Engineering: n=75, iii) Medicine: n=77, iv) Health Sciences: n=204, and v) Medicinal Chemistry: n=87.
Although there was no statistically significant difference in the use of surface learning among the five discipline groups, there were wide variations in the use of deep learning approach. Furthermore, older students and those with English as an additional language were more likely to use deep learning approach. Controlling for hours spent in paid work during term-time and English language usage, both surface learning approach (β=−0.13, p=0.001) and deep learning approach (β=0.11, p=0.009) emerged as independent and significant predictors of academic performance.
Findings from this study provide further empirical evidence that underscore the importance for faculty to use teaching methods that foster deep instead of surface learning approaches, to improve the quality of student learning and academic performance.
Previous research has pointed to the role television can play in informing health practices and beliefs. Within the academic setting in particular, some educators have raised concerns about the ...influence of medical dramas on students. Less research, however, draws on the perspectives of students, and this study therefore explores medical students' perceptions of medical practice and professionalism in popular medical television programmes. Qualitative data from surveys of Australian undergraduate medical students showed that students perceived professionalism in dichotomous ways, with three main themes: cure–care, where a doctor's skill is either technical or interpersonal; work–leisure, where a doctor is either dedicated to work or personal life; and clinical–administration, where work is either direct patient care or administration. There continue to be imagined divisions between curing and caring for students, who express concerns about balancing work and leisure, and expectations that doctors should have little administrative work. Given students were able to identify these important contemporary issues around professionalism on television, there is pedagogical value in using popular images of the medical world in medical education.
Attrition from nursing programs is common, costly and burdensome to individuals, nursing faculties and the health care system. Increasingly, nursing faculties are requested to monitor attrition rates ...as a measure of performance, but little is known of the influence of career choice on program completion.
The aim of this study was to assess the impact of nursing as a first choice for study on attrition in a baccalaureate nursing program.
A longitudinal, cohort design was used in this study, which involved undergraduate nursing students enrolled at a university in Australia. Of the 357 participants who completed a baseline survey in 2004 at entry to their Bachelor of Nursing program, 352 were followed up over a six-year period to the end of 2009.
Students who selected nursing as their first choice for study were nearly twice as likely (OR: 1.99 95% CI: 1.07–3.68) to complete their nursing program compared to those who did not. These students were also more likely to be older (mean age: 26.8 vs 20.1years, P<0.001), and employed in nursing-related work (35% vs 2%, P<0.001). In addition, the study revealed that male students (OR: 1.93 95% CI: 1.07–3.46) and those who worked more than 16h per week during semester (OR: 1.80 95% CI: 1.09–2.99) were less likely to complete than their counterparts.
These data assist in generating realistic projections of completion and entry to the workforce. Understanding patterns of attrition and individuals' motivations to be a nurse is important not only for supporting nursing students to help them complete their studies but also for developing more targeted strategies directed toward student recruitment and retention.
Academic writing skills are essential to the successful completion of preregistration nursing programs, yet the development of such skills is a challenge for many nursing students, particularly those ...who speak English as a second language (ESL). It is vital to develop and evaluate strategies that can support academic writing skills for ESL nursing students. This qualitative study evaluated a four-day academic writing intervention strategy designed to support ESL first-year nursing students. Data from the program showed two major areas of difficulty for participants relating to academic writing: problems understanding course content in English, and problems expressing their understanding of that content in English. The participants noted a key benefit of this program was the provision of individual feedback. Programs such as this intervention successfully meet the demands of ESL nursing students, although ongoing support is also needed.
Newspapers are a highly influential media that reflect and powerfully influence the views and cultural practices of individuals and societies. Study of phenomena using the media as a lens can provide ...new insights and understandings into how a phenomenon is culturally constructed and understood. This current study sought to explore media coverage of maternal grief following child death and loss. Articles published in major Australian newspapers over three months were gathered and analysed using a thematic approach. Findings showed that the tragic mother, a noble victim of suffering, is a powerful maternal image in the media. There were two key ways women as mothers were represented in their grief: as tragic heroes, and; as moral guides and activists. Using an interdisciplinary approach that references classical and modern interpretations of tragedy, this study interrogates how our culture imbues child death with dignity because of the quality of maternal grief.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VSZLJ
Although the so-called 'CSI effect' has received attention in the literature for the influence of forensic science television on jurors' expectations of evidence admitted into trials, less research ...explores the influence of such television programs on university students enrolled in forensic science degrees. This paper describes the quantitative and qualitative results of a study of forensic science students regarding the forensic-related television programs they watch, such as CSI, Bones and Dexter. We asked students to share their impressions of the accuracy, ethics, professionalism and role models in the programs. The results show that forensic science students are almost universally disparaging about the realism of these programs and have mixed impressions of how the programs portray forensic science professionalism and ethics. Most students believed that the programs gave an unrealistic representation of the profession to the public; yet students were also able to identify positive elements for recruitment and education purposes.
For many years, sections of Australian literature have competed with utopian impressions of the country by displaying a fear that often manifests itself in apocalyptic renderings of landscape and ...life. At work in many of these texts is a contradiction that seemingly rejects fears by asserting the popular belief of Australia as a "lucky country," isolated from the rest of the world's problems by geography, while at the same time constantly undermining this notion by showing that complacency and optimism can prove unfounded and false, and may very well lead to catastrophe and disaster. Here, Weaver examines the tension between security and fear by focusing on Nevil Shute's novel On the Beach, a key text that demonstrates the idea of the nation's vulnerability to the outside world.
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