The Best Laid Plans? A Qualitative Investigation of How Resident Physicians Plan Their Learning.

Participants used trial and error to find learning strategies to help them manage the systemic challenges encountered when transitioning from medical school to residency. The success (or failure) of these efforts was tied to learners' efficacy with the self-regulated learning concepts of agency, metacognitive goal setting, and motivation. A conceptual model is provided to describe the impact of these factors on residents' ability to be adaptive learners, and actionable recommendations are provided to help educators' efforts to foster adaptive learning skills and behaviors. These findings also provided valuable evidence of validity of the MAL model that has thus far been lacking.