A Chameleon and a Sponge: A Qualitative Study on Adaptability in Undergraduate Clinical Medical Students

Introduction: Adaptability is the capacity to make appropriate responses to changed or changing situations. Whereas clinicians’ adaptability is framed as a vital part of adaptive expertise, clinical medical students may be adaptable even when they are not yet experts. Investigating this early-stage adaptability can reveal how adaptive expertise first begins to take shape. This study examines how undergraduate medical students experience and enact adaptability during their clerkship rotations.

Methods: Through 20 semi-structured interviews with clinical medical students from two universities, in Belgium and The Netherlands, this qualitative study explores how students perceive and demonstrate adaptability.

Results: The study identifies two domains in which students’ adaptability takes shape: their role as future doctors and their role as learners. In these two domains adaptability functions as both a means to navigate clinical complexity and as a process of professional growth. Results highlight a duality: students need adaptability to thrive during rotations while simultaneously engaging in a process of further developing their adaptability.

Discussion: The ongoing interaction between being adaptable and developing adaptability plays a crucial role in clinical education. Previous research shows that adaptive expertise helps explain how learners turn their experiences of adaptability, central to this study, into skills that support their ongoing professional growth. By making visible how students act and develop adaptability in everyday practice, our findings guide reflection on the implications for clinical education and the build of the foundation of later adaptive expertise.