Self-evaluation by first-year medical students in a clinical science programme.

Medical education progressively prepares students for professional autonomy and functioning. Such autonomy requires well-developed, internalized mechanisms of self-awareness and self-discipline to ensure that the practising doctor’s attitude and behaviour are truly in the interest of patients. The authors believe the foundations for developing these mechanisms can be established in the first year of medical school as the student begins to experience and delineate the doctor’s role. This paper presents the development, procedures, and retrospective analysis of self-evaluation as it was implemented in a first-year clinical science teaching group at the School of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University.