Teaching medical students to prioritize preventive services

Fam Med. 2006 Nov-Dec;38(10):696-9.

Abstract

Background: Clinicians cannot provide all recommended preventive services in a single office visit and must learn to prioritize. This skill is not overtly addressed in medical school.

Methods: We designed a workshop to teach third-year medical students to prioritize preventive services during an office visit. In a prospective controlled trial, we compared performance on a standardized patient case.

Results: Students performed well, but there was no significant difference between intervention and control groups' mean scores on the standardized patient encounter.

Conclusions: Our brief intervention failed to increase students' scores on a standardized patient case requiring preventive services prioritization.

Publication types

  • Randomized Controlled Trial

MeSH terms

  • Clinical Competence / statistics & numerical data
  • Decision Support Techniques*
  • Education, Medical, Graduate / organization & administration
  • Education, Medical, Graduate / standards
  • Health Priorities / standards
  • Humans
  • Patient Care / standards
  • Patient Education as Topic / methods*
  • Problem-Based Learning / methods*
  • Prospective Studies
  • Students, Medical
  • Teaching / methods