Hervey Bay Hospital, Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service, Hervey Bay, QLD, Australia.
School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Campbelltown, NSW, Australia.
BMC Med Educ. 2024 Mar 8;24(1):256. doi: 10.1186/s12909-024-05219-2.
Overdiagnosis is a growing health issue, yet our understanding of medical students' exposure to this concept within medical education is limited. Our aim was to explore students' experience of diagnostic learning to identify how overdiagnosis may be understood by students. During in-person and online semi-structured interviews throughout 2021, we explored the education experience of twelve Western Sydney University medical students in years 3-5. Through inductive thematic analysis we identified four themes. These themes encompassed student commitment to learning about diagnosis, lack of certainty surrounding diagnosis and emotional factors of medical care, overdiagnosis as seen through the lens of high and low-value care during clinical placements and student-identified missed learning opportunities related to overdiagnosis. This study found that medical students develop inherent knowledge of overdiagnosis through an interplay of personal factors, medical school curriculum and the setting in which their training takes place. Our findings allow insight for future improvement of medical curriculum to produce exceptional medical graduates.
过度诊断是一个日益严重的健康问题，但我们对医学生在医学教育中接触这一概念的理解有限。我们的目的是探讨学生的诊断学习体验，以确定学生如何理解过度诊断。在 2021 年期间进行的面对面和在线半结构化访谈中，我们探讨了 12 名西悉尼大学医学生在第 3 至 5 年的教育经历。通过归纳主题分析，我们确定了四个主题。这些主题包括学生对诊断学习的承诺、对诊断的不确定性以及医疗保健的情感因素、在临床实习中通过高价值和低价值医疗的视角看待过度诊断以及学生确定的与过度诊断相关的错失学习机会。本研究发现，医学生通过个人因素、医学院课程和培训环境的相互作用，形成了对过度诊断的固有知识。我们的研究结果为未来改进医学课程以培养优秀医学毕业生提供了深入了解。
