King's Undergraduate Medical Education in the Community (KUMEC), Department of Primary Care and Public Health Sciences, London, UK.
Clin Teach. 2024 Apr;21(2):e13642. doi: 10.1111/tct.13642. Epub 2023 Aug 26.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many medical students were deployed as vaccinators. This study set out to capture the lived experience of students at a London-based mass vaccination site, understand what they learned, how this learning compared to their experience of usual medical education and how any identified benefits might be leveraged in a post-pandemic context.
Student vaccinators (n = 8) were recruited from the vaccine clinic workforce and invited to complete semi-structured interviews about their experiences. Thematic analysis was conducted on interview transcripts to identify significant concepts, which were interpreted in the context of available literature.
Participants' experiences aligned broadly with the undergraduate curriculum. However, many also identified hidden curriculum areas developed through their work as vaccinators, including professionalism, self-regulating learning and ethical decision-making.
The need for adequate support, whilst promoting autonomy, was highlighted as vital in supporting professional identity formation within a community of practice, benchmarking clinical knowledge and performance, and in support of student wellbeing, in the face of challenging real-world clinical encounters.
Increased entrustment of clinical activity could be implemented in primary and secondary care settings to reproduce the benefits experienced by student vaccinators in front-line roles during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further work might consider how to maximise these benefits and increase inclusion and participation.
在 COVID-19 大流行期间，许多医学生被部署为疫苗接种者。本研究旨在捕捉伦敦大型疫苗接种点学生的真实体验，了解他们的所学内容、这些学习与他们通常的医学教育体验的比较，以及如何在后疫情时代利用任何已确定的优势。
从疫苗接种诊所工作人员中招募学生疫苗接种者（n=8），邀请他们完成有关其经验的半结构化访谈。对访谈记录进行主题分析，以确定重要概念，并根据现有文献对其进行解释。
参与者的经验与本科课程大致相符。但是，许多人还确定了通过疫苗接种者工作发展起来的隐性课程领域，包括专业精神、自我调节学习和道德决策。
在面对具有挑战性的现实世界临床接触时，强调了在实践社区中支持专业身份形成、基准临床知识和绩效以及支持学生健康方面，需要充分的支持，同时促进自主性。
可以在初级和二级保健环境中增加临床活动的委托，以重现学生在 COVID-19 大流行期间在一线角色中所经历的优势。进一步的工作可能会考虑如何最大限度地利用这些优势并增加包容性和参与性。
