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Critical review: medical students’ motivation after failure

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Abstract

About 10 % of students in each years’ entrants to medical school will encounter academic failure at some stage in their programme. The usual approach to supporting these students is to offer them short term remedial study programmes that often enhance approaches to study that are orientated towards avoiding failure. In this critical review I will summarise the current theories about student motivation that are most relevant to this group of students and describe how they are enhanced or not by various contextual factors that medical students experience during their programme. I will conclude by suggesting ways in which support programmes for students who have encountered academic failure might be better designed and researched in the future.

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  1. Guys, King’s and St Thomas’ School of Medical Education, King’s College London, Henrietta Raphael House, Guys Campus, London, SE1 1UL, UK

    Chris Holland

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Correspondence to Chris Holland.

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This piece is adapted from work that was previously submitted as part of a Doctorate in Education.

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Holland, C. Critical review: medical students’ motivation after failure. Adv in Health Sci Educ 21, 695–710 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-015-9643-8

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