"He's going to be a doctor in August": A narrative interview study of medical students' and their educators' experiences of aligned and misaligned assistantships

Objective To explore final-year students’ and clinical supervisors’ experiences of alignment and misalignment with future Foundation Year 1 (F1) posts in an assistantship programme in the UK. Setting Assistantships are clinical placements in which students assist junior doctors by undertaking similar duties under supervision. Models of assistantship programmes vary across curricula. Some actively seek to align with students’ initial postgraduate F1 post. To date, no research has examined the implications of this association for teaching and learning. Qualitative individual and group narrative interviews were conducted with students and supervisors of 2 Welsh medical schools to address: RQ1: How do students and supervisors understand the purpose of the longitudinal assistantship? RQ2: Does alignment/misalignment of the assistantship with students’ initial F1 post influence students’ and supervisors’ teaching and learning experiences? Audio-recordings of interviews were transcribed, participants anonymised and framework analysis was used. Participants A convenience sample of 4 participant groups comprised (1) final-year medical students whose assistantship and F1 post were aligned (n=27), (2) final-year medical students whose assistantship and F1 post were misaligned (n=18) and (3) supervisors (n=10, junior doctors; n=11, consultants). Results All participant groups highlighted increased student confidence in undertaking the duties of an F1 doctor arising from their assistantship period. Learning transferable skills was also highlighted. Many students considered themselves to be team members, ‘learning the trade’ as they shadowed their F1. Opportunities for caring for acutely unwell patients were scarce. The evidence shows enhanced engagement for students aligned to their first F1 post with greater opportunities for workplace acclimatisation. Those who were misaligned were perceived as being disadvantaged. Conclusions Our findings suggest that alignment with students’ first F1 post enhances the assistantship experience. Further longitudinal assessment is required to examine whether and how this translates into improvement

Extent of Information and Communication Technology Skills Possessed by Librarians in University Libraries in Anambra State, Nigeria

Persistent innovations and advances in Information and Communication Technology have substantially modified the way information is acquired, processed, stored, retrieved, and communicated. This has consequently changed the ways the library, which is visibly and significantly placed in the profession of information management operates, hence creating the need for library and information professionals to be sufficiently skilled in ICT operations which are now necessary for effective information services delivery. However, users are seemingly starved with services which the library professionals are expected to deliver through the use of ICTs. This implies that librarians are possibly not conversant with ICTs that they might be unable to respond to users’ needs promptly and render excellent library service to users as well. This is an ugly situation and may likely bring discredit to librarians and library profession in this 21st Century. This study therefore surveyed extent of Information and Communication Technology skills possessed by librarians in the universities in Anambra State, Nigeria. The research design adopted for this study is descriptive survey. The population consists of thirty-three (33) librarians in the five universities in Anambra State. Population was small hence, the whole subjects were studied. Two instruments - achievement test and questionnaire were used for data collection. Data obtained were analyzed using simple percentages, frequencies, and mean rating. Findings of the study include: Librarians in the universities in Anambra State are weakly skilled in ICTs hence their overall average percentage score in ICT skills was 58.3%. Their average percentage scores in dimensions of ICT are as follows: Basic Computing 83%, File Management 71%, Word Processing, 76%, E-mail operations 54%, Automated Cataloguing and Classification/use of OPAC 42%, use of Library Automation Software 56%,  use of the Internet/WWW 61%, Information Search and Retrieval 62%, Presentation using Microsoft Power Point, 40%, Database Creation/Management 38%. Average percentage scores showed that librarians are highly-skilled in Basic Computing, Word Processing, and File Management and are moderately-skilled in Information Search and Retrieval, Internet and World Wide Web. They are weakly-skilled in Library Automation, E-mail operations, and are not skilled in Automated Cataloguing and Classification/use of OPAC, presentation using Microsoft Power Point, Database Creation/Management. Challenges militating against librarians’ ICT skills acquisition were identified and solutions were proffered. Keywords: Information and Communications Technologies, skill, Information and Communications Technologies Skills, University Library