Are pre-professional undergraduate students ready for authentic clinical case studies: An empirical study of students' perceived relevance and motivation.

Increasingly, the curricula of many clinical programs have been re-structured to an integrated model where foundational sciences such as physiology, pathophysiology and pharmacology are taught side-by-side with clinical reasoning. Case-studies are an excellent pedagogical strategy for enhancing such integration, especially if such cases are authentic - that is, they include a broad range of information that could influence the individualization and optimization of patient care. However, authentic cases may be too advanced and thereby dissuade preclinical students. We offered an optional semester-long authentic pharmacotherapy case study to undergraduate students in an introductory pharmacology class in a liberal arts college in Midwest USA and sought to know what may motivate students to complete this challenging task.


METHOD
Connection with, and relevance of the case study were assessed with an anonymous survey. Open-ended questions were analyzed qualitatively. Exploratory factor analysis and nonmetric multidimensional scaling were employed to investigate underlying commonalities and patterns in the motivations for participating and relating to the case study.


FINDINGS
Students were motivated more by the perceived relevance and transferability of knowledge acquired to their future career than their current clinical technician jobs or their personal lives.


CONCLUSIONS
Rather than cause an information overload and dissuade students, this complex pharmacotherapy case assignment harnessed preclinical students' experiences from cognate co-curricular activities, created numerous points of relevant engagement with instructional content and therefore motivated students to deeper learning.