‘I feel like I sleep here’: how space and place influence medical student experiences

Abstract

Despite much effort and a focus on creating an idyllic space and place, the new medical school had both positive and (unintentionally) negative impacts on student experiences. These findings highlight the importance of reflecting on, and exploring, how space and place may influence and shape students' learning experiences during the formative years of their development of a professional identity, a necessary consideration when planning new medical school learning spaces or changing these spaces.

Doctors’ identity transitions: Choosing to occupy a state of ‘betwixt and between’

“…Furthermore, exploration specifically of liminality and identity work over time extends the current health care education literature on liminality, which has so far tended to focus on broader notions of threshold concepts. [36][37][38] Whereas previous health care literature and the wider interdisciplinary literature have focused mostly on notions of temporary liminality, [36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45] our study findings extend these, illustrating doctors' narrations of perpetual liminality and occupying liminality, and offering a more complex and multidimensional picture of transitions than has been presented previously. Indeed, the longitudinal nature of our analysis allowed us to show patterns of liminal experiences over time, which challenges some previous health care education research in which liminality is presented as a troublesome linear phenomenon that resolves with time.…”

“…43 Others have focused on physical spaces as liminal, such as the hospital corridor as a liminal space for discussion, knowledge exchange and informal learning, or how a new medical school building becomes a liminal space between the profession and the university. 44,45 In summary, much of the current health care education liminality literature focuses on undergraduate rather than postgraduate learners such as trainee doctors, conceptualises transitions and associated liminality experiences as more linear and temporary than current theoretical thinking suggests, gives insufficient attention to how identity work contributes to liminality experiences and how these liminal experiences might change over time, and assumes that liminality experiences are always stressful. [39][40][41][42]…”

Cosmopolitans in Australian and New Zealand Health Care Systems

“…Indeed, I have personally developed and taught such curricula. Students also observe their peers, colleagues, teachers and health care practitioners in different work-related and social settings; where they make their own informal observations and assessments of where the boundaries of professionalism and cultural competence might lie (Bolier et al 2018;Hawick et al 2018;Jowsey 2018). Students are encouraged to write and reflect upon such observations -their stories -in personal written portfolios where they demonstrate not only the hidden curriculum but also their 'cosmopolitan competence' and orientations towards cosmopolitanism.…”

Examining the clinical learning environment through the architectural avenue

“…Research in this area has focused on curriculum alignment issues of architecture and various conceptual models to understand different forms of space and its inter-connections with learning and clinical activities that occur in the architectural space (Nordquist and Laing 2015). Another theme in the work on the impact of the physical environment is the study of space and identity (placemaking) (Kitto et al 2013;Hawick et al 2016;Hawick et al 2018). From a practical point of view, there is interest in having the design and construction of new clinical learning spaces explicitly take into consideration alignment, placemaking, and interconnections with the intent to optimize these spaces for the clinical and learning function.…”