A Realist Evaluation of Senior Medical Students' Perspective of a One-Week A Residential Aged Care Facility Clerkship

Abstract

Background: Residential aged care facilities (RACFs), also known as nursing or aged care homes are infrequently used to deliver experience-based learning to medical students. Methods: This is a realist evaluation of senior medical students’ perspective of a one-week clerkship delivered in RACFs seeking to find what aspects of their clerkship worked for whom and why as part of the evaluation of the clerkship. This is a qualitative study using written and focus group data.Results: The highly structured curriculum delivered many positive learning outcomes for students such as practice in improving management of end-of-life and dementia care, an understanding of how RACFs functioned, and a chance to participate in interprofessional practice. The context also challenged some students who struggled to see the relevance of the clerkship in relation to their personal and/or professional identities.Conclusions: The realist evaluation builds on a previous theory of experience-based learning adding a student intraindividual aspect to the theory to better define the mechanisms involved. The resulting realist theory of experience-based learning may prove useful to other studies of experience-based learning.