How might we assist the young doctor in preparing for medical residency tests?

The future resident doctor

The medical profession is a specialized and enduring journey that demands significant effort and constant challenges. In Brazil, aspiring doctors must pursue a 5-year bachelor's degree from a university approved by the Ministry of Education (MEC) to earn the title of Doctor, specializing as a general practitioner. During these 5 years, students dedicate 4 years to theoretical knowledge, while the final year is dedicated to practical training. This crucial final year provides students with hands-on experience across various areas of clinical practice through supervised internships conducted by specialized professors.

Following graduation, the majority of doctors aspire to further specialize by pursuing a medical residency program, which enables them to work as specialists in their chosen fields. Without this specialized title, doctors often find themselves subjected to long shifts and performing as general practitioners. Securing approval for medical residencies in Brazil requires doctors to pass exams similar to those encountered during undergraduate entrance exams, with each institution administering its own exams. These residency exams can vary in structure, encompassing both practical and theoretical components.

Consequently, doctors face the challenge of balancing rigorous preparation for these highly competitive and demanding exams with their routine duties, including on-call responsibilities and practical training. This creates immense time constraints and substantial pressure as they prepare for this defining moment in their careers.

To support doctors in their pursuit of medical residency approval, our company offers a technologically-mediated course designed specifically to prepare them for the residency test. This course is delivered through a digital platform, accessible across multiple devices, albeit reliant on an internet connection, and may exhibit varying performance across different browsers and devices.

Our aim is to provide doctors with a comprehensive and flexible preparation resource that accommodates their busy schedules while equipping them with the knowledge and skills necessary to excel in the medical residency exams. Through our digital platform, doctors can access high-quality study materials, engage in interactive learning experiences, and receive guidance from experienced instructors. We understand the unique challenges doctors face during this critical phase of their careers and are dedicated to supporting them on their path to success.

Briefing

The product is an application that offers the same capabilities as the company's web platform experience.
The application includes new features and offline studying capabilities.
Both app and web platform offer content in four formats: videos, podcasts, e-books, and exam simulations.
The goal is to provide an optimized experience for student doctors.
The application is designed to adapt to the stressful and demanding routines of student doctors.
Many student doctors have long shifts and spend more than 12 hours outside their homes.
Students may need to study in less comfortable intervals and situations.
Face-to-face classes are not feasible, so customized study routines are necessary.

Stakeholder Interviews

The first step in the research process to define the study application was to interview the company stakeholders and know the expectations and definitions prior to the project investigation and beginning of the design process. I developed a script with questions that could bring out the specific demands of each department and each stakeholder. At the end of the script-writing process,

I wrote a full article on this stage of the project, which can be accessed here .

The interviewees were: The CEO of the company, the CTO, the Project Manager, the Director of the Learning and Content, the Product Director, the Marketing Director. From the interviews, inputs were generated, which were transformed into questions in the model "How might we ...? ".

This format allows the insights to be worked on by the design team during the execution of the project and that are not decisive and limiting factors for development, but generators of necessary questions during its execution. The questions were grouped by similarity and by focus. Then we filter and categorize the main points, defining them in questions to be solved and prototyped.

At this stage, it was possible to map the long-term objectives and current problems seen by an internal view of the company.
With the current knowledge we imagine the possible paths that could build an optimized journey for our users and how we could answer the questions proposed by our stakeholders. These answers are certainly not the final answers to these questions, but they do allow us to generate new questions about the validity of these ideas and inputs to explore the concepts with users.

Investigating users' needs

After defining the foundations of the project, we were able to understand that in order to develop a successful product in the eyes of the stakeholders, we would need to offer a quality experience to the students, to strengthen the brand, show security and ensure that they can realize the dream of being accepted at a medical residency and earn the title of specialist.

The second step, therefore, was to define the parameters of an ideal experience for the student and how to enable a study routine that would assist in better performance in the tests.

With this objective in mind, I invited students currently studying on the platform to meet at the company. By meeting the students in person, I was able to understand, along with the other members of the design team, the individual realities of each student and common factors that guide the medical career. We brought topics about these students' daily lives, their career desires and how they deal with platform to measure your pains and needs. Through a stripped-down conversation, we introduced several questions and listened to everything they had to say.

The result of this research was translated into the creation of archetypes of the company's users:

Persona 1

Needs
Increase content consumption;
Measure your performance;
Discipline in studies.
Wishes
Greater contact with other students and doctors in the area;
Ease of accounting for the studied content;
Improvements to the simulation tool.

Persona 2

Needs
Study between college and internship breaks;
Save the cell phone internet plan;
Discipline in studies;
Wishes
Offline classes to study in the internship;
Tool to organize your notes;
Content aligned with the day-to-day of the internship.

Persona 3

Needs
Read while traveling;
Specific study plans for the institutions of your choice;
Monitor consumption and personal performance;
Wishes
Be able to measure the study by books;
Social tools inserted within the platform;
Personalized content for the institutions of your choice.

Persona 4

Needs
Speed in the search for the content you need to study;
Simple interface with few clicks;
Specific content for the first years of graduation;
Wishes
Study plan aligned to the university grid;
Receive news and updates about medicine;
Get to know better the residency exam;

Understanding the learning flow

Using the inputs from the interviews of the stakeholders and students who use the platform, a study of the study patterns seen was carried out, in a mapping of the study and learning journey.

Our interest at the time was to see how the learning objects (Podcast, videos and simulations) were used during the students' study period (usually one year) and what the vocations of these objects are in the learning journey.