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Table 3 Students’ comments of the selectives programme development of their scholarship competencies

From: Teaching research: a programme to develop research capacity in undergraduate medical students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Scholarship competency

Students’ qualitative comments

Phrasing clear, answerable, relevant research questions related to clinical practice.

[The Selective helped me in…] identifying common problems and doing research on this in the community

Locating, critically evaluating and interpreting relevant & previous research findings from robust sources

Learning how to [conduct] and write a literature review

Considering the applicability of research, understanding research design, analysis, research ethics, consider patient autonomy, respect plagiarism, confidentiality and ownership of intellectual property.

The Selectives has given us abilities and skills in research that we would not have gained anywhere else in our medical curriculum and even some qualified doctors don’t have and are shocked that we have such a good approach to research

Health promotion based on what we found in the research

Creating, applying; translating and disseminating knowledge.

Able to apply the knowledge that I have learnt on the classroom in a real clinical setting

I improved my presentation skills

It was great publishing our research in a journal

Demonstrating a lifelong commitment to reflective learning.

I felt like we made a difference during the health promotion intervention.

It helped me to reflect on myself as a clinician, I liked the use of the Gibbs [reflective learning] Cycle.

Valued the constructive feedback from peers and lecturers on our health promotion intervention