Document Type
Poster
Publication Date
Spring 3-20-2026
Abstract
Background
The culture of medical education often promotes maladaptive symptoms of anxiety, depression, and lower quality of life. Many medical students report their physical and emotional health to be lowest after their first year, often never returning to baseline. Shifting medical culture to a more supportive and empathetic environment early in training encourages help-seeking behavior, shared vulnerability, and community building early in training. The Imperfect Rounds initiative aims to normalize the challenges of medical training, encourage support seeking, and foster a culture of shared vulnerability across medicine through storytelling while equipping medical students with strategies to navigate these challenges throughout medical training.
Methods
A retrospective pre-test Qualtrics survey assessing the impact of professional identity formation was available to all attendees. These surveys included pre- and post-session questions focused on sense of community, self-efficacy, self-confidence, ability to handle difficult topics (e.g., moral distress, failure, finding joy, gratitude, and humor in medicine) associated with the selected Imperfect Rounds topic.
Results
Following each Imperfect Rounds session, the average response of each survey’s pre- and post-test responses were analyzed. All three sessions showed a statistically significant difference between the before and after assessments using a one-tailed paired t-test results (moral distress, p-value = 0.0059 (n=11); failure, p-value = 0.0063 (n=23); humor and gratitude, p-value = 2.91E-5 (n=34)). Results also showed a statistically significant difference in the one-tailed paired t-test (p-value = 0.0004) for the likelihood of using healthy coping mechanisms like humor and gratitude in difficult situations. Students reported consistently positive perceptions about normalization of struggling in medical training, comfort with discussing stigma, and sense of community without statistical significance, but students report consistent agreement that these sessions help normalize challenges in medical training.
Conclusions
Medical Students perceive Imperfect Rounds as a feasible and meaningful method to bolster medical student confidence when engaging in challenging clinical encounters, to promote professional identity formation and support-seeking behaviors among students and residents, to increase medical students’ sense of community at UTTSOM, to demonstrate how strengthened support systems throughout medical school promote vulnerability and normalize seeking help, and to support destigmatization of struggle and failure in medicine. With continued implementation and study, Imperfect Rounds can be replicated and scaled to other medical institutions, thereby creating a community of shared experiences across all levels of medical training in the pursuit of becoming outstanding physicians. High attendance coupled with favorable responses to the series suggests that Imperfect Rounds is a worthwhile initiative to continue at UT Tyler, and integrating longitudinal ethics education into the medical curriculum may help address gaps in students’ confidence when navigating difficult topics.
Persistent Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/10950/5219
Copyright information
N/A
Journal/Conference Details
UT Tyler School of Medicine Research Day 2026
Friday, March 20th, 2026
Biomedical Research Center located on the Health Science Center Campus of UT Tyler (11937 US HWY 271, Tyler, TX)