Lived experiences of medical interns on the impact of medical curriculum on clinical skills: a phenomenological study

BACKGROUND: Clinical education occurs formally during educational rounds across various departments and through discussions in small groups within clinical settings. The experience of studying in the general medicine program, culminating in the internship stage, is often regarded as a pivotal transitional phase from being a student to becoming a physician. This study seeks to comprehend the lived experiences of medical interns regarding the impact of the national curriculum on the skills required in the hospital. METHOD: This research is a qualitative study conducted using a phenomenological approach. Participants included 15 medical interns who had completed at least 6 months of internship training in a hospital. Data were collected through unstructured in-depth interviews. Data were analyzed according to the descriptive phenomenological approach of seven steps, Content analysis of Colaizzi. RESULTS: The medical interns participating in this study included 7 females and 8 males. Five individuals had completed 6 months of their internship, 4 had completed 12 months, and 6 were in the final month of their internship. After analyzing the data from 15 interviews, 120 initial codes were extracted, which reached 95 main codes after removing duplicate codes, re-reviewing, and reducing codes, and merging similar codes. Finally, the data analysis led to the extraction of three sub-categories: 'The impact of medical role model professors', 'Characteristics of Learners', and 'Web-Based Education'. The subcategories led to the development of the main category 'Self-Cultivation'. CONCLUSION: Medical internship students experience a wide variety of encounters with the curriculum. Therefore, more attention should be paid to all dimensions of individual factors, curriculum, the role of clinical teachers, and modern technologies to be integrated and considered holistically.