Teaching medical students to prioritize preventive services

Background: Clinicians cannot provide all recommended preventive services in a single office visit and must learn to prioritize. This skill is not overtly addressed in medical school. Methods: We designed a workshop to teach third-year medical students to prioritize preventive services during an office visit. In a prospective controlled trial, we compared performance on a standardized patient case. Results: Students performed well, but there was no significant difference between intervention and control groups' mean scores on the standardized patient encounter. Conclusions: Our brief intervention failed to increase students' scores on a standardized patient case requiring preventive services prioritization.