Perceptions of Orthopaedic Medicine Students and Their Supervisors About Practice-Based Learning: An Exploratory Qualitative study

Abstract

\n Background\n\nPractice based learning is crucial in forming appropriate strategies for improving learning among the medical students that support the country’s understaffed health sector. Unsatisfactory learning consequently results into poor performance of students and poor quality of health care workforce in the long run. Exploring the perceptions about the current practice-based learning system and how to improve is thus vital. This study therefore set out to explore perceptions of Orthopaedic medicine students and their supervisors about practice-based learning at a tertiary training hospital.\nMethods\n\nThis was an exploratory qualitative study that involved in-depth interviews among 10 orthopedic students during their rotation in the emergency ward of Mulago hospital and 6 of their supervisors. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and then imported into Atlas ti 8.3 for analysis. The data was coded and grouped into themes relating to perceptions of practice-based learning, general inductive analysis was used. The general inductive approach involved condensing the raw textual data into a brief and summary format. The summarized format was then analyzed to establish clear links between the perceptions of practice-based learning and the summary findings derived from the raw data.\nResults\n\nPerceptions explored in the in-depth interviews included: presence of too many students on the wards during the rotation, frequent stock-outs of supplies for learning and supervisors being overwhelmed caring for the large number of patients.\nConclusion\n\nBarriers to satisfactory practice-based learning were overcrowding on the wards and insufficient training materials. In order to improve practice-based learning, adequate learning materials are required and the number of students enrolled need to be appropriate for the student – supervisors’ ratio.