..that was the year I that I learnt to think and to question and to find out things for myself...a qualitative review of the role of intercalated BScs in medical education
Bibliographic record
Abstract
CONTEXT: Intercalated degrees (or iBScs) are voluntary 12 month extensions to the medical undergraduate course, undertaken in medical schools in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. With higher education funding likely to become increasingly scarce, educational interventions and their outcomes will face tougher scrutiny. Existing studies of such courses are limited to quantitative measures examining the impact on UG performance and on subsequent academic careers . There has been no synthesis of data about student choices and the role of iBScs. Rational Choice Theory, from the field of sociology, provides a framework for understanding student’s behaviour with regards their decision to undertake iBScs. OBJECTIVE: To provide a qualitative review of the published literature giving contextual data on opinions, attitudes, beliefs and narratives concerning iBScs from stakeholders; students, doctors and academics. METHODS: We have used Critical Interpretive Synthesis as this methodology allows us to collate and synthesize evidence from a diverse range of sources. We undertook a literature search with standard databases (NLM, ERIC etc) of both peer-reviewed and non peer-reviewed journals (relevant grey literature) . Data was analysed using a modified thematic framework analysis to identify major themes from the data. RESULTS: From 90 articles found, we analysed 53 articles, with 3 principle themes emerging. The first theme concerned the decision to undertake an iBSc, with students receiving conflicting advice, though many desired a binary answer. In some institutions structural factors (compulsion, academic selection) influenced the decision. The second theme was the experience of doing the degree; a wide range of positive and negative experiences were described, with key positive factors being intellectual and personal growth and the key negative aspect being the costs incurred (financial, time and loss of peer groups). The last theme identified was the future ramifications of having done an iBSc – it was felt it was likely to be beneficial to future employment prospects (especially for academics) and may cultivate qualities that make a better doctor. CONCLUSION: Our work highlights a wide range of opinions and experiences that have not been shown in the existing quantitative data on the subject. It points to a potential structure for careers advice about iBScs, though does not address the question of whether iBScs actually make better doctors. There is an argument for making the intangible benefits of iBSs explicit when discussing the place of iBScs in the medical curriculum.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.026 | 0.050 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".