Medical students’ satisfaction with clinical clerkship and its relationship with professional self-concept

PURPOSE: Medical students construct their identity as a student physician through clinical clerkship. However, there is a lack of research on the effect of clinical clerkship on professional self-concept formation. The aim of this study is to analyze and ascertain the relationship between medical students’ satisfaction with clinical clerkship and professional self-concept. METHODS: This investigation studied 84 third- and fourth-year medical students enrolled in the Ajou University School of Medicine and Graduate School of Medicine. Study measures tools included satisfaction with clinical clerkship and professional self-concept measurement. For data analyses, a descriptive analysis of the research variable characteristics was applied, gender differences in variables by years of medical school were analyzed with t-tests, and correlation analysis was used to check for relationships between variables. RESULTS: We found no statistically significant differences between satisfaction with clinical clerkship with respect to medical school year and gender. While professional self-concept did not show significant differences by year of medical school, we observed statistically significant differences by gender with respect to the subscales of professional practice and communication factor. In addition, satisfaction with clinical clerkship and professional self-concept demonstrated statistically significant positive correlation. The present research was able to confirm that there exists a correlation between medical students’ clinical clerkship experience and professional self-concept formation. CONCLUSION: Our study outcomes shows that provision of positive assistance as a measure to enhance satisfaction with clinical clerkship via the curriculum and environmental improvement is envisaged to lead to medical students’ professional self-concept formation.