Promoting innovation: Enhancing transdisciplinary opportunities for medical and engineering students.

PURPOSE: Addressing current healthcare challenges requires innovation and collaboration. Current literature provides limited guidance in promoting these skills in medical school. One approach involves transdisciplinary training in which students from different disciplines work together toward a shared goal. We assessed the need for such a curriculum at Dartmouth College. METHODS: We surveyed medical and engineering students' educational values; learning experiences; professional goals; and interest in transdisciplinary education and innovation. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. RESULTS: Shared values among student groups included leadership development, innovation, collaboration, and resource sharing. Medical students felt their curriculum inadequately addressed creativity and innovation relative to their engineering counterparts (p < 0.05). Medical students felt less prepared for entrepreneurial activities (p < 0.05), while engineering students indicated a need for basic medical knowledge and patient-oriented design factors. Despite strong interest, collaboration was less than 50% of indicated interest. CONCLUSIONS: Medical and engineering students share an interest in the innovation process and need a shared curriculum to facilitate collaboration. A transdisciplinary course that familiarizes students with this process has the potential to promote physicians and engineers as leaders and innovators who can effectively work across industry lines. A transdisciplinary course was piloted in Spring 2017.

Student Perceptions of Assessment for Workplace Learning and Summative Decisions Using Frequent Mini-CEXs.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Introduction: Direct observation assessments that provide both formative feedback and data for summative decisions can be difficult to achieve. The mini-clinical evaluation exercise (mini-CEX) is a widely used tool of direct observation that provides opportunities for feedback. We introduced a direct observation system with frequent mini-CEXs to increase clerkship student learning opportunities and to improve competency-based summative decisions. However, students may express resistance to assessments for learning with any summative impact as they may perceive the assessments as purely a series of summative evaluations. Aims: We explored how frequent low-stakes mini-CEXs affect clerkship students' perception of learning and to understand student perceptions of these assessments supporting their end-of-rotation summative clinical performance evaluations. Methods: This qualitative study used a purposive sampling strategy of focus groups with students who completed multiple mini-CEXs during their four-week neurology clerkship at one of three sites. All eleven students chose to participate. Eight students completed eight mini-CEXs, two students completed seven, and one student completed four. Investigator triangulation was used with interpretation comparisons that included independent content analysis. The emerging themes were discussed and final theme consensus was reached. Results: Three major themes arose: perceived effects of frequent mini-CEXs for clerkship student learning by facilitating multiple opportunities for guided practice under low assessment anxiety; the importance of consistent, effective faculty feedback and engagement to maximize mini-CEXs for learning; and support for summative impact of frequent, mainly formative, low stakes mini-CEXs. Conclusions: Students perceived that frequent mini-CEXs are mainly formative assessments for learning while having summative impact. However, variable perceived faculty affinity and engagement with the mini-CEX are important considerations to maximize the assessments for learning. These findings support a shift towards workplace-based assessment programs for learning that promote frequent direct observation and feedback, while also improving the trustworthiness of summative decisions.