Page 36 - Medical students’ self-regulated learning in clinical contexts

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Some students perceived departments with a short average length of stay of pa ents in hospital to limit their SRL opportuni es because it hindered studying pa ent cases in depth. Along these lines, some others students also perceived long-stay departments, such as psychiatry, to limit their possibili es to engage in SRL because it hindered their opportunity to see a wide variety of pa ents and ful ll their learning goals.
Discussion
Medical students described a variety of rou nes and characteris cs of clinical departments that in uenced their self-regulated learning. Rou nes of clinical departments supported students’ SRL by facilita ng professional rela onships, and by showing that e ort was invested in students’ learning. Rou nes that facilitated professional rela onships most notably a ected students’ SRL by enabling others to be engaged in students’ SRL, increasing students’ mo va on, decreasing barriers to ask ques ons, and by making learning experiences and feedback more meaningful. Rou nes that made students feel e ort was invested in their learning most notably supported their SRL through aiding goal se ng, increasing learning opportuni es catered to the needs of a speci c student, enabling monitoring of one’s own progress, and receiving valuable and personalized feedback. Certain characteris cs, such as highly specialized care, a rela ve homogeneous pa ent mix, very short or very long stay departments, and departments with heavy me constraints, made students perceive these clinical departments as less suitable for their SRL because these characteris cs limited the variety of SRL goals they could work on.
The two themes we found in the rou nes of clinical departments that in uence students’ SRL both pertain to rela ons between students and sta members. Firstly, it is of great importance for students’ SRL to be enabled by rou nes that form rela onships with sta members. It is known that rela onships between sta and students are important for learning,17 but has been ge ng li le explicit a en on. Our results demonstrate the importance of enabling students that form rela onships, because this in uences their use of SRL. It was striking to nd that a basic psychological need for a feeling of relatedness, and a need for legi mate peripheral par cipa on, played such an important role in the forma on of rela onships and thereby s mulates SRL.18–20 This implies that sa sfying these needs is catered to in varying degrees by clinical departments. Sa sfying these needs is predominantly hindered by high numbers of students simultaneously learning in a clinical department, and frequent rota ons in both sta members and students.