Abstract: Objective To review the educational cultural connotation of "bridge courses"of clinical medical education, so as to inform the organ-system integration courses reform. Methods From June 2018 to June 2021, 176 medical students of the eight-year clinical medicine major of Peking University Health Science Center, who were interns in Peking University First Hospital from 2015 to 2018, were enrolled in this study. After each level of students completed the learning task of "bridge courses", semi-structured one-to-one interview method was used to investigate their understanding and harvest of "bridge courses". Keywords of the answer content were extracted, word frequency analysis and co-word clustering analysis were used, and corresponding to the Canada medical education directions for specialists model. The frequency of different role competence involved in the content of students' answers was analyzed. Results The educational cultural connotation of "bridge courses"was concentrated in three parts: professional teaching culture, humanistic care culture and emotional connection culture. Among the students' answers about competence, 55.1%(97/176) were medical experts, 65.9%(116/176) were communicators, 21.6%(38/176) were professionals, 9.1%(16/176) were collaborators and 1.7%(3/176) were scholars. Conclusions "Bridge courses"educational culture connotation reflects in professional, humanistic and social aspects, and has important teaching value in competency-based medical education. The inheritance of "bridge course"educational culture will continue to be the foundation and driving force for medical college education, and provide support for eight-year curriculum in clinical medicine.

Key words: Students, medical, Clinical medicine, "Bridge courses", Organ system integration, Teaching reform, Educational culture