Page 18 - Medical students’ self-regulated learning in clinical contexts

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Before construc ng this thesis, I have been a medical student myself, at the Academic Medical Center-University of Amsterdam, from which I graduated in 2013. This prior experience has clearly been bene cial for my ability to imagine the situa ons stu- dents described when discussing their learning in interviews or during focus group sessions. It allowed me to understand the students’ speci c vocabulary, discussions about the medical curricula, about the clerkships speci cally, and about the Dutch higher educa on system in general. Furthermore, the small hierarchical and small age di erence between most students and me, likely limited the barrier for students to discuss topics they felt might be sensi ve to the faculty and, as I am also an MD, students appeared to trust me and o en shared personal situa ons and problems that a ected their learning.
However, having recent experience in clerkships myself also has a possible downside to the research project. My personal experiences with learning in the clinic may have had an in uence, for instance on the research ques ons we studied, the popula- on I selected for my research, the intona on used whilst asking ques ons, and the follow-up ques ons I pursued during interviews. It is inevitable that some of my own experiences have had an in uence on the results of our studies. Together with the various research teams I worked in, we have tried to constantly be aware of this and re ect on the e ect I may have had on the results presented, for instance by reading many transcripts together with other researchers.
The speci c context of this thesis
In this thesis the role of context has a central place. Speci cally interes ng about the clinical context as a learning context, is that it is full of rou nes and habits on the individual sta member level and on the department level. These rou nes and habits in uence the roles and tasks of students, and therefore also in uence the interac- ons students have with other people during their clinical clerkships.
The studies presented in this thesis have been conducted in the Netherlands. All but half of the students who par cipated in chapter 4 were enrolled in the Master of medicine program at the Academic Medical Center-University of Amsterdam (AMC- UvA). In this sec on I give some details about this speci c context. The students from another Dutch university, who par cipated in the study presented in chapter 4, were enrolled in the master of medicine program of Maastricht University. The details re- garding their curriculum are given in chapter 4.