Motivating medical students to learn teamwork skills

Background: This study examined teaching teamwork skills to first-year medical students. Teamwork skills focused on verbal communication in PBL-tutorial sessions and in healthcare teams. Aims: The aim was to find out how to teach teamwork skills to first-year medical students and how to motivate them to learn these skills. Method: Three consecutive classes of first-year medical students (N = 342) participated in teamwork skills module in the years 2006, 2007 and 2008. After the first year, the introduction to the topic was revised in order to be more motivating to medical students. After each module data were collected with a feedback questionnaire containing numerical and open questions. By analyzing the students' numerical answers and the content of students' open answers regarding the module, we examined how the revised introduction affected students' perceptions of the usefulness of the module. Results: Medical students' feedback in the years 1 (n = 81), 2 (n = 99) and 3 (n = 95) showed that the students found the module in the second and third years significantly more useful than in the first year. These results support earlier findings that clearly stated clinical relevance motivates medical students. Conclusions: When introducing multidisciplinary subjects to medical students, it is important to think through the clinical relevance of the topic and how it is introduced to medical students.