Teaching medical students musculoskeletal examination skills: identifying barriers to learning and ways of overcoming them

Objectives: To elicit the barriers to the effective teaching of musculoskeletal examination skills amongst medical students. Methods: This was a qualitative study including six focus groups with specialities most often involved in delivering musculoskeletal clinical teaching: rheumatology, orthopaedics, general practice, and geriatrics. Results: The main barriers to the delivery of effective clinical teaching included the lack of agreement on what to teach, lack of confidence in teaching amongst non-musculoskeletal specialities, and poor communication between specialities. Conclusions: There is a need to overcome the identified barriers if musculoskeletal clinical teaching to medical students is to be improved. In particular, there is a need to agree which examination skills medical students should learn.