Qualification and teaching of peer-student tutors in undergraduate medical education: Does it affect the understanding and acquiring of CanMEDS competencies?

<p><strong><span>Objective: </span></strong><span><span>The Canadian Medical Education Directives for Specialists (CanMEDS), described by scientists of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, specify the competencies that medical students should acquire during their studies of human medicine. These include the skills of Medical Expert, Communicator, Collaborator, Manager, Professional, Health Advocate and Scholar. We investigated the opinion of former student tutors that are currently active as clinical residents to understand whether they acquired and applied the CanMEDS competencies more during their student tutoring activities or during their undergraduate medical training. </span></span></p> <p><b><span>Methods:</span></b><span> An online questionnaire with closed and open questions were distributed to residents with work experience as student tutors. A Likert scale was used to assess the relevance of each CanMEDS competency to their current employment and to evaluate the acquisition and application of each CanMEDS competency during undergraduate medical </span><span>training in comparison to their peer-student tutor employment. We used the sign test for identify </span><span>significant differences in the acquisition and application of CanMEDS competencies. </span></p> <p><b><span>Results</span></b><i><span>:<b> </b></span></i><span>Of one hundred and twenty-three tutors, twenty-four met the inclusion criteria and fourteen questionnaires were returned. Concerning acquiring the CanMEDS roles Collaborator, Communicator, Professional and Manager there was a significant difference in favour of peer-student tutor employment. Nearly all participants indicated that they noticed a general benefit </span><span>from having worked </span><span>as peer-student tutors.</span></p> <p><b>Conclusion:<i> </i></b>We found that employment as a peer-student tutor is beneficial for the respondents in general and for the acquisition and application of several CanMEDS roles in particular.</p>