摘要：Purpose: The acquisition of clinical-technical skills is of particular importance for the doctors of tomorrow.Procedural skills are often trained for the first time in skills laboratories, which provide a sheltered learning environment.However, costs to implement and maintain skills laboratories are considerably high.Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to investigate students’ patterns of attendance of voluntary skills-lab training sessions and thereby answer the following question: Is it possible to measure an effect of the theoretical construct related to motivational psychology described in the literature – ‘Assessment drives learning’ – reflected in patterns of attendance at voluntary skills-lab training sessions? By answering this question, design recommendations for curriculum planning and resource management should be derived. Method: A retrospective, descriptive analysis of student skills-lab attendance related to voluntary basic and voluntary advanced skills-lab sessions was conducted.The attendance patterns of a total of 340 third-year medical students in different successive year groups from the Medical Faculty at the University of Heidelberg were assessed. Results: Students showed a preference for voluntary basic skills-lab training sessions, which were relevant to clinical skills assessment, especially at the beginning and at the end of the term.Voluntary advanced skills-lab training sessions without reference to clinical skills assessment were used especially at the beginning of the term, but declined towards the end of term. Conclusion: The results show a clear influence of assessments on students’ attendance at skills-lab training sessions.First recommendations for curriculum design and resource management will be described.Nevertheless, further prospective research studies will be necessary to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the motivational factors impacting students’ utilisation of voluntary skills-lab training in order to reach a sufficient concordance between students’ requirements and faculty offers, as well as resource management.
