Insights into Applied Clinical Learning: The "OSCAR" Programme

Abstract

The final year of a medical course is an important time for both medical students to consolidate information learnt in the previous years of the course, and its application in real clinical situations. This is often done on the wards as students watch their clinical teachers treat different clinical problems. This process, however, is slow as many students do not spend sufficient time seeing patients, preferring to study from their textbooks and notes. Clinical teachers also differ significantly in terms of their abilities to convey information to medical students which affects standardisation of the acquisition of practical clinical skills. The "Oscar" Programme was developed to incorporate teaching on real life clinical scenarios in order to develop clinical reasoning and decision making. Keywords: applied clinical medical education