摘要：Background: Portfolios are increasingly used in undergraduate and postgraduate medical education. Four medical
schools have collaborated with an established NHS electronic portfolio provider to develop and implement an
authentic professional electronic portfolio for undergraduate students. We hypothesized that using an authentic
portfolio would have significant advantages for students, particularly in familiarizing them with the tool many will
continue to use for years after graduation. This paper describes the early evaluation of this undergraduate portfolio
at two participating medical schools.
Methods: To gather data, a questionnaire survey with extensive free text comments was used at School 1, and
three focus groups were held at School 2. This paper reports thematic analysis of students’ opinions expressed in
the free text comments and focus groups.
Results: Five main themes, common across both schools were identified. These concerned the purpose, use and
acceptability of the portfolio, advantages of and barriers to the use of the portfolio, and the impacts on both
learning and professional identity.
Conclusions: An authentic portfolio mitigated some of the negative aspects of using a portfolio, and had a
positive effect on students’ perception of themselves as becoming past of the profession. However, significant
barriers to portfolio use remained, including a lack of understanding of the purpose of a portfolio and a perceived
damaging effect on feedback.
