Psychiatric Liaison Service, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Center of Epidemiological Psychiatry and Psychopathology (CEPP), Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
BMC Med Educ. 2022 Aug 15;22(1):619. doi: 10.1186/s12909-022-03642-x.
Calling within the medical context receives growing academic attention and empirical research has started to demonstrate its beneficial effects. The purpose of this study is to investigate what motivates students to enter medical school and what role calling may play (i), to evaluate if calling influences the way in which they experience their studies (ii), and to compare medical students' experience of calling with those of physicians.
A questionnaire survey was distributed among medical students (N = 1048; response rate above 60%) of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. It was supplemented by a group discussion between bachelor medical students (N = 8) and senior physicians (N = 4), focusing on different facets of calling. An existing data set of a survey among physicians, addressing calling with the same questionnaire, was used to compare students' and physicians' attitudes towards calling. Survey data were analyzed with the habitual statistical procedures for categorical and continuous variables. The group discussion was analyzed with thematic analysis.
The survey showed that experiencing calling is a motivational factor for study choice and influences positively choice consistency. Students experiencing calling differed from those who did not: they attributed different definitions to calling, indicated more often prosocial motivational factors for entering medical school and perceived the learning context as less burdensome. The analysis of the group discussion revealed that the concept of calling has a fluid definition. It was conceived as having the characteristics of a double-edged sword and as originating from within or outside or from a dialectic interplay between the inner and outer world. Finally, calling is experienced less often by physicians than by medical students, with a decreasing prevalence as the immersion in the clinical years of the study of medicine progresses.
Calling plays an important role in study choice and consistency of medical students. Given its relevance for medical students and its ramifications with the learning context, calling should become a topic of the reflexive parts of the medical curriculum. We critically discuss the role played by calling for medical students and provide some perspectives on how calling could be integrated in the reflection and teaching on physicianhood.
在医学背景下，呼唤现象越来越受到学术界的关注，实证研究也已经开始证明其有益效果。本研究旨在探讨激励学生选择医学专业的因素以及呼唤现象可能扮演的角色：（一）评估其是否影响学生对学业的体验；（二）比较医学生和医生对呼唤现象的体验。
瑞士洛桑大学的医学生（N=1048；回复率高于 60%）参与了问卷调查，此外，我们还组织了一次医学生（N=8）和资深医生（N=4）的小组讨论，重点讨论了呼唤现象的不同方面。我们使用了一项针对医生的调查问卷的现有数据集来比较学生和医生对呼唤现象的态度。采用惯常的统计方法分析分类和连续变量的调查数据。对小组讨论进行了主题分析。
调查显示，呼唤现象是选择医学专业的动机因素之一，它对选择的一致性有积极影响。经历呼唤现象的学生与没有经历呼唤现象的学生存在差异：他们对呼唤现象有不同的定义，更多地将亲社会的动机因素归因于选择医学专业，并且认为学习环境的负担较小。小组讨论的分析表明，呼唤现象的概念具有灵活性。它被认为是一把双刃剑，其起源于内在或外在，或者来自于内心世界和外在世界之间的辩证互动。最后，医生比医学生经历呼唤现象的频率更低，随着医学学习临床阶段的深入，呼唤现象的发生率逐渐降低。
呼唤现象在医学生的选择和一致性方面发挥着重要作用。鉴于呼唤现象对医学生的重要性及其对学习环境的影响，呼唤现象应成为医学课程反思部分的一个主题。我们批判性地讨论了呼唤现象对医学生的作用，并提供了一些关于如何将呼唤现象融入对医生职业的反思和教学的观点。
