Trust your struggle

Excerpt

Transitions in medical education are challenging for students, postgraduate trainees, their preceptors, and everyone else in the workplace [1]. This issue of Perspectives on Medical Education features a paper by Atherley and colleagues that clearly illustrates these challenges for undergraduate medical students [2]. They focused their transition study on the shift of context that students experience within rotation-based clerkships when moving from one rotation to the next. Some interesting findings emerged. For instance, students recognized the need to start a new rotation with a positive attitude and to try and develop a good relationship with staff. Paradoxically, both intentions could require students to ignore reputations of a rotation and its people. If not ignored, anticipation could stand in the way of taking full advantage of the learning opportunities of a rotation [2]. Fortunately, many students reported that the struggle of working through a transition added to their professional identity development and led to increased confidence. …