Making Reflective Practice by Interns Visible Through Digital Storytelling

Abstract Background Facilitated reflection-based activities may support the development of reflective practice in medical trainees, an important activity in the process of professional identity formation. Digital storytelling is a multimedia reflection-based activity that expands upon traditional modalities and follows universal design for learning. There is a paucity of literature describing use of digital stories in graduate medical education trainees. Objective We explored themes in digital stories by interns reflecting on experiences that impacted and shaped them as physicians. Design We performed a retrospective thematic analysis of digital stories created by Internal Medicine interns to describe themes of transformative learning experiences. Participants All interns within a single residency program and at large, university-based health system participated in a reflection curriculum between July 2015 and June 2019. We considered 161 digital stories created during this time period for thematic analysis until we achieved saturation of themes. Approach To foster understanding of the rich, complex data within digital stories we used an inductive approach to construct themes. Key Results We identified three themes from thirteen focused codes. Digital stories revealed interns use this modality to deeply describe experiences in which they (1) realized an aspect of their professional identity, (2) further understood or engaged with patients, (3) or recognized the challenges of the physician role. Conclusions To our knowledge, this is the first thematic analysis of digital stories by graduate medical education trainees. We observed that digital storytelling gave interns an opportunity to reflect upon experiences informing their professional identity and patient stories. This activity allowed interns to share and understand challenges they faced. These themes align with the reflection prompt, indicating we met the curricular objectives, as well as key domains in professional identify formation. Through the rich themes identified, we demonstrate this unique technology-based modality effectively fosters deep, intentional, explicit reflection. Graphical Abstract