Training may impact shift work mentality in students
Authors: Jennifer N Stojan; J. Schiller; J. Fitzgerald; M. Lypson
Year: 2013

care challenging. Doctors are expected to develop competencies far beyond patient care in order to succeed in modern health care delivery systems. The manager role has been defined in various competency catalogues for health care professionals. However, concrete pedagogical implementation concepts are lacking. What was tried? We established an innovative course at the Ludwig Maximilian University Medical School with the objective of preparing undergraduate medical students for their future role as managers in the health care system. At the beginning of the course, the students developed an understanding of the basic principles of the German health care system and hospital management through problem-based learning tutorials, lectures and workshops. During the second part of the course we organised a simulated hospital board meeting, with students assuming the roles of the university hospital’s supervisory board members. For this part students had the chance to gain insight into the board members’ daily work by conducting interviews with them. Subsequently they developed a viable solution for a current issue of the supervisory board and ultimately presented their results to their work-life counterparts. The course is supplemented with workshops aimed at improving soft skills, such as negotiation strategies, project management or team building. In order to assess the overall knowledge of the students about health policy and management, we used a pre-post self-assessment tool within our paper-based evaluation as well as semi-structured interviews. What lessons were learned? Twenty-four students participated and evaluated the course, using a questionnaire with a response rate of 95.8%. The course was graded with a mean of 1.08 (standard deviation 0.2) using a 6-level Likert scale (1 = excellent; 6 = poor). Concerning questions about core points of the German health care system, means prior to the course ranged from 3.17 to 4.69 (6-level Likert scale, 1 = ‘excellent knowledge’; 6 = ‘very poor knowledge’). After completion of the course, significant improvement could be detected in all core points assessed with the questionnaire (means ranged from 1.85 to 2.55). The results were triangulated with semi-structured interviews (n = 6) and thematic content analysis until saturation was reached. The findings confirmed our quantitative assessment and allowed for a deeper understanding of how students constructed the course experience. An additional outcome was the successful presentation of a realistic business plan devised by the participants to the actual supervisory board of the university hospital. This course was evaluated positively and students seem to have gained some management competencies. Nevertheless, the complexity of the structure and the personnel expense of the course make integration in the core curriculum difficult. In our setting, teaming up medical educators and management personnel has created a win–win situation. Courses such as this could initiate a broader curricular reformation, as more curricular elements for teaching the manager role are certainly needed.