| Theme | Student perception | Representative quote |
|---|---|---|
| Elements perceived to be extremely helpful in facilitating students' success | ||
| Leadership Summit | All students attended Leadership Summit, and most thought it was crucial to their success Workshops on leadership, advocacy and communication were essential to developing skills required to succeed as part of STARS program Some students felt that less time should have been spent on building STARS mission statement, and more time listening to speakers and attending workshops | "[The leadership summit] gave structure to the group … there were a lot of workshops in the introduction by [Choosing Wisely Canada staff] as to what the focus of the campaign was, and this was really helpful to determine what direction we wanted to go in terms of resource stewardship." (School 3) |
| Conference calls | Most students attended conference calls every 2 mo with Choosing Wisely Canada staff and other STARS students Calls were a great way to obtain high-level overview of activities planned at other schools and to seek advice from larger STARS community and central Choosing Wisely Canada team Some students commented that the timing of calls during the day made it difficult to attend Students also felt that calls could have been structured with clearer objectives | "It was a good hour-long investment where you could learn a snapshot of what was going on, to tell what you were doing, and then potentially get help if you needed, and I thought that was really effective". (School 4) |
| Collaboration through pan-Canadian STARS network | Most students interacted with national STARS student network and found the interaction to be very valuable Students shared resources, provided peer-feedback and advice to others encountering common challenges, and collaborated on interschool activities (provincial campaign week, surveys) | "They didn't want it just be that 1 conference and go off and do your own thing; they wanted to have that connection. I felt the community of practice was good." (School 8) |
| Elements perceived to be helpful facilitators but not consistently accessible or available to students | ||
| Faculty mentor/advisor | About half of the students worked closely with a faculty member and found his or her support to be quite helpful Faculty members helped by providing advice and guidance, advocating for proposed changes and connecting STARS students with local stakeholders Students who did not interact as closely with faculty leads at their home institution wanted this support but had challenges scheduling meetings owing to faculty unavailability, or had trouble engaging an actual lead at their school Other students commented that they were not certain what the faculty lead's role might be in helping with their initiative | "Our faculty mentors have essentially pushed our curricular change. It's been great to have an ally who is an MD faculty". (School 4) "It's hard to find a mentor on your own ... somebody ... you can ask all these questions and bother them." (School 12) |
| Other medical students | Some students found it helpful to engage other interested students at their medical school to divide the workload associated with planning and implementing STARS initiatives Local medical students helped to organize and set up events and engage other classmates, and provided insight on the upper years of medical school for STARS students in preclerkship | "The workload of enacting curricular change is significant, and having 2 people, 1 of whom entered clerkship soon after the STARS conference, was a little bit difficult to make all of the changes that we want to happen, so I was really happy that we were able to bring in other motivated students." (School 4) |
| Elements seen as "nice to have" but not perceived to be critical facilitators of overall students' success | ||
| Facebook group | All the students were part of Facebook group but did not perceive that the information shared in the group advanced their local initiatives in a meaningful way Students appreciated the opportunity to receive updates on other STARS initiatives and enjoyed seeing photographs of successful events Many students thought Facebook group was not used to its full potential because it was mostly used for passive information sharing and some of the information had already been disseminated through other methods (email, conference calls) Students would have preferred more active collaboration using the Facebook group Some students mentioned that they do not used Facebook as much as they had in the past | "It was useful to be connected with other students, but I wish it was used for more discussion, and I guess it is hard to … I think it is better for planning or if they put up resources they used ... I know also people put up pictures of things like that. If it was used more like that, I think it would have been more useful ... to keep students all on the same page about what was happening across the different universities. It wasn't fully utilized." (School 1) |
| Shared Google document | Most students posted information related to their STARS initiatives on the shared Google Doc at the beginning, but only a small proportion found it to be useful Main challenge was that students did not routinely update the information on the Google Doc | "I guess I can say initially it was quite nice to be able to list all the initiatives as well as faculty names as it was really organized, but I don't know what happened after that; there wasn't really any follow-up." (School 16) |
Note: STARS = Students and Trainees Advocating for Resource Stewardship.