Enhancing Clinical Competencies Through Peer Role-Play in Oncology Graduate Students: Mixed Methods Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Clinical competency is essential for oncology students to deliver high-quality patient care. However, traditional teaching methods may not fully support the development of critical skills such as communication, empathy, and clinical judgment. Peer role-play has emerged as a promising approach to bridge these gaps by enhancing interpersonal and diagnostic competencies within clinical settings. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of peer role-play in developing clinical competencies among oncology graduate students during their clinical rotation. METHODS: This study involves 70 first-year oncology graduate students from Affiliated Cancer Guangzhou Medical University Cancer Hospital in a 3-month clinical rotation within the department of oncology from January 2022 to December 2023. Participants were randomly assigned to either a peer role-play group (n=35) or a traditional teaching group (n=35), ensuring balanced gender and baseline competencies. The role-play group engaged in a structured curriculum that included case presentation, classroom instruction, and weekly role-play sessions, with debriefing and feedback sessions following each role-play. The traditional teaching group adhered to a standard curriculum without role-play exercises. Assessments included a baseline oncology theory exam, Mini-Clinical Evaluation Exercise for clinical competency evaluation, and a satisfaction survey for the role-play group. RESULTS: Baseline theory exam scores were comparable between the 2 groups (P=.08). However, the peer role-play group demonstrated significant improvements in doctor-patient communication, medical history taking, clinical judgment, and overall clinical competence compared to the traditional teaching group (P<.05). Furthermore, students in the role-play group reported high levels of satisfaction, citing scenario realism, communication practice opportunities, and feedback quality as key benefits. CONCLUSIONS: This study indicates that peer role-play is an effective educational approach for developing clinical competencies in oncology graduate students, particularly in communication, empathy, and clinical reasoning. Role-play provides an engaging and practical learning experience, making it a valuable addition to clinical training programs aimed at enhancing patient-centered care skills in students.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.008 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".