Confidence-building in a collaborative, multidisciplinary mock page activity for fourth-year medical students

Graduating medical students require multiple skills that are not traditionally taught in medical school. Mock paging activities, where school of medicine (SOM) students receive pages as if from nursing staff in a practice environment, are being used as a tool to teach communication and to enhance confidence. Prior small-scale, specialty specific mock page activities have demonstrated improvement in confidence, communication with other healthcare personnel, and medical decision-making.(3-5) This Mock Page Activity aimed to evaluate the effect on confidence and communication for large graduating SOM class entering different specialties. SOM faculty collaborated with the School of Nursing (SON) faculty in the design and implementation of this activity. Medical students completed pre-/post surveys regarding confidence in communication, interaction with other healthcare professionals, and patient management. Two years of medical student survey data (n=420) after the Mock Page Activity implementation demonstrated a significant increase in general confidence (30.4%, p <0.001) related to receiving communication from nursing staff, making clinical decisions over the phone, and using a pager as a communication device. This multidisciplinary Mock Page Activity improved communication and confidence during paging activities for a large group of medical students pursuing different specialties. Strengths of the study include being the largest, specialty non-specific mock page activity reported in the literature. Limitations include varied individual experience of students and questionable benefits for students pursuing non-patient care careers in medicine. Future directions include iterative improvement based on feedback and incorporation of an interprofessional debrief session to ensure equal benefit to the participating SON students.

Automated summary

Graduating medical students need additional skills that are not traditionally taught. Mock paging activities have been used as a tool to teach communication and improve confidence. This study aimed to evaluate the effect on confidence and communication for a large group of medical students entering different specialties.