The emerging professional: Early clinical students’ views about their learning environment

Introduction: The clinical learning environment is a dynamic and demanding educational setting. Medical students go through a series of developmental shifts and need to adapt to the challenges of clinical reasoning and learning. Objective: To establish how medical students could be better supported through the transition to the clinical years and what changes need to be made for more supportive clinical learning environments. Method: Students in early clinical training were asked to discuss and derive through consensual dialogue issues that need to be addressed and/or changed in reference to their clinical learning experiences. Themes were determined through focus group deliberation using the small group instructional diagnostic process. Result: There is strong evidence, from this group of students, of an emergence of professionalism as student go from years four to five. Year four students requested more student-centered assistance and scaffolding as learners, while year five students appear to be seeking more independent and professionally applicable learning experiences. Conclusion: Deriving consensus-driven ideas from students is a potent system for gaining insights into the needs of students within the clinical setting. These ideas can be instructive for educationalists in enabling more supportive learning environments.