Teaching medical students to prioritize preventive services.

BACKGROUND Clinicians cannot provide all recommended preventive services in a single office visit and must learn to prioritize. This skill is not overtly addressed in medical school. METHODS We designed a workshop to teach third-year medical students to prioritize preventive services during an office visit. In a prospective controlled trial, we compared performance on a standardized patient case. RESULTS Students performed well, but there was no significant difference between intervention and control groups' mean scores on the standardized patient encounter. CONCLUSIONS Our brief intervention failed to increase students' scores on a standardized patient case requiring preventive services prioritization.