EVALUATION COMMITTEE

The Faculty Council has appointed the following adjudication committee to evaluate the thesis and the associated lecture: 

• Dr. Madeleine Dahlgren, Department of Health, Medicine and Caring Science, Linköping University
• Dr. Klaus Nielsen, Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Aarhus BSS, Aarhus University
• Dr. Sine Agergaard, HST, Aalborg University, Denmark (Chairman)

Moderator:
Dr. Henrik Vardinghus-Nielsen, HST, Aalborg University

Abstract

Medical educations around the world are responsible for educating medical students to meet the demands from a complex and fast-changing healthcare system. A trend that requires competent, reflective, robust, and engaged students who can collaborate interdisciplinary. A trend that also requires high-quality medical education that enables students to meet the personal and professional expectations of their future duties as a physician. In the wake of the increasing demands for both medical education and medical students, there has been an increased focus on both problem-based medical education and the importance of medical students' identity development, as part of preparing medical students to become a future physician. Despite the growing awareness and interest in problem-based medical education and identity development in medical students, the relationship between the two is sparsely described in the literature. Based on the lack of research in the field and my interest, I seek through my dissertation to uncover the relationship between clinical problem-based medical education and medical students' personal and professional development. Though, with a focus on how the clinical problem-based medical education sets the scene for medical students' social identity development and their approach to learning.

These aims are reached through my scoping review and ethnographic study of medical students in the clinical practice in the hospital. My dissertation is based on data from 3 studies and shows the following:

There is a growing interest in problem-based medical education and identity development in medical students, respectively. In my scoping review, I show that the relationship between problem-based medical education and identity development is very sparsely described in the literature. The majority of the literature concerning identity development in medical students is based on a certain identity understanding grounded in ‘communities of practice’ by Lave and Wenger as a theoretical framework and thus sees identity as being something dynamic that is always under construction and strongly influenced by social interaction. Furthermore, the literature concerning problem-based medical education focuses primarily on the effect on learning, implementation and the principles behind the pedagogy and not as a frame for identity work.

The clinical problem-based medical education gives the students a high degree of autonomy and responsibility for their own learning and forms the framework for several different social identities. Social identities that depend on the students' own commitment, engagement, and personality as well as the learning environment in which they are enrolled. Among several social identities that students either assume or assign in clinical problem-based practice, three prominent social identities were identified. Which is social identity as a medical student, as a colleague and as a nearly physician.

The three prominent social identities influence on how and what students learn. As a medical student, there is a focus on feedback, supervision, reflection, learning, peer-learning, role modelling; as a colleague, there is a focus on language, norms, values, cooperation, social interaction and; as a nearly physician, there is a focus on patient care, responsibility, independence, autonomy, performance and self-directed learning. The different learning perspectives that relate to the social identities are connected to how and what they learn and therefore plays a important role in preparing them to become a physician.

In summary, my dissertation intends to discuss how clinical problem-based medical education is designed or developed to give medical students the best possible conditions and prerequisites to handle the transition from being a medical student to becoming a physician.