Medical students' awareness of overdiagnosis and implications for preventing overdiagnosis

Medical students' awareness of overdiagnosis and implications for preventing overdiagnosis

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:BMC medical education Vol. 24; no. 1; p. 256
Main Authors: Colbert, Lucinda, Hegazi, Iman, Peters, Kath, Edmiston, Natalie
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: England BioMed Central Ltd 08-03-2024
BioMed Central
BMC
Subjects:
Analysis
Awards & honors
Beliefs, opinions and attitudes
Clinical medicine
Clinical placements
Cognition & reasoning
Critical thinking
Curricula
Data Analysis
Data collection
Datasets
Diagnosis
Ethics
Evidence-based medicine
Feedback
Health aspects
Independent study
Interviews
Knowledge
Learning
Medical colleges
Medical diagnosis
Medical education
Medical research
Medical student
Medical students
Medical tests
Medicine
Native peoples
Overdiagnosis
Patients
Peers
Public opinion
Student Experience
Teaching Methods
Thinking Skills
Australia
Torres Strait
Medical education
Clinical placements
Diagnosis
Overdiagnosis
Medical student
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Summary: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.
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ISSN:1472-6920
1472-6920
DOI:10.1186/s12909-024-05219-2