‘Capable of being in uncertainties’: applied medical humanities in undergraduate medical education

2021 ◽  
pp. medhum-2020-012127
Author(s):  
Neepa Thacker ◽  
Jennifer Wallis ◽  
Jo Winning

Numerous medical schools have been updating and modernising their undergraduate curricula in response to the changing health needs of today’s society and the updated General Medical Council competencies required for qualification. The humanities are sometimes seen as a way of addressing both of these requirements. Medical humanities advocates would argue that the humanities have a vital role to play in undergraduate medical education, allowing students to develop the critical tools required by the 21st-century clinician to deliver the best person-centred care. While we endorse this view, we contend that such training must be taught authentically to have maximal impact. This article arises from a collaboration between Imperial College London and Birkbeck, University of London, which aimed to embed the humanities into Imperial’s undergraduate medical curriculum. Here, we use a teaching session on graphic medicine and narrative as a case study to illustrate how the humanities can be a powerful tool for students to explore professional clinical complexity and uncertainty when taught in a transdisciplinary way. In this session, uncertainty operated on several different levels: the introduction of unfamiliar concepts, materials, and methods to students, transdisciplinary approaches to teaching, and the complexities of real-life clinical practice. Further, we argue that to manage uncertainty, medical students must cross from a scientific training based on positivist understandings of evidence and knowledge, to one which foregrounds multiplicity, nuance, interpretive critical thinking, and which understands knowledge as contingent and contextually produced. In facilitating such learning, it is crucial that the teaching team includes experts from both medical and humanities fields to scaffold student learning in an intellectually dynamic way, drawing on their disciplinary knowledge and wide range of personal professional experiences.

2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 218-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Fitzmaurice ◽  
Katie Armstrong ◽  
Valerie Carroll ◽  
Declan Dagger ◽  
Michael Gill

Academic psychiatry departments have two principle roles within undergraduate medical education. The first is to increase knowledge about psychological and psychiatric disorders and their treatments. The second is to help students develop the clinical skills to sensitively, effectively and accurately interview patients with psychological problems (General Medical Council, 1993) and to assess the mental states of patients.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dhruv Gupta ◽  
Lahvanya Shantharam ◽  
Bridget Kathryn MacDonald

Abstract Background:It is now a General Medical Council requirement to incorporate sustainable healthcare teaching (SHT) into medical curricula. To date, research has focussed on the perspective of educators and which sustainable healthcare topics to include in teaching. However, to our knowledge, no previous study has investigated the perspective of both undergraduate and postgraduate medical students in the UK regarding current and future incorporation of SHT in medical education.Methods:A questionnaire was circulated to clinical year medical students and students intercalating after completing at least one clinical year in a London University. The anonymous questionnaire consisted of sections on the environmental impact, current teaching and future teaching of SHT.Results:163 students completed the questionnaire. 93% of participants believed that climate change is a concern in current society, and only 1.8% thought they have been formally taught what sustainable healthcare is. No participants strongly agreed, and only 5 participants (3.1%) agreed, that they would feel confident in answering exam questions on this topic, with 89% agreeing that more SHT is needed. 60% believe that future teaching should be incorporated in both preclinical and clinical years, with 31% of participants preferring online modules as the method of teaching.Conclusion: Our novel study has stressed the lack of current sustainable healthcare teaching in the medical curriculum. From a student perspective, using online modules throughout medical school presents an attractive method of incorporating sustainable healthcare teaching in the future.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-11
Author(s):  
Sadia Jabeen Khan ◽  
Md Humayun Kabir Talukder ◽  
Kazi Khairul Alam ◽  
Farhana Haque ◽  
Md Rezaul Karim

This descriptive type of cross sectional study was carried out to evaluate the attitude of undergraduate medical students of Bangladesh regarding selected areas of professionalism like honesty and confidentiality. Study period was from July 2017 to June 2018. Sample size was 837 undergraduates medical students of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th phase of MBBS course from four public and four non government medical colleges of Bangladesh. Convenience sampling technique was adopted in this study. Data collection was done by a modified structured situational judgment test (SJT) self-administered questionnaire which was adopted from general medical council (GMC) and by in-depth interview schedule of students. The data were then compiled and analyzed using SPSS Version 19.Among the study participants, 37.20% (310) and 62 .80% (537) were males and females respectively. Attitude towards the two most major issues of professionalism were good, mean score were above three in honesty. Mean score was below three in maintaining confidentiality. Result of the present study shows that female students had higher mean professionalism than male. Female students were better than the male students in regards to all two different professional issues and this difference is statistically highly significant (P=0.00). Mean score of professionalism of 1st phase students in all two issues were greater than the respondents of other three phases and this findings was also statistically significant. Medical undergraduates of Bangladesh have a good understanding of acceptable professional honesty but there is scope of improvement. Study recommended that these two issues of professionalism must be taught in the course of undergraduate medical education and should be incorporated in undergraduate medical curriculum with the details of learning outcome what we craving from a registered medical graduate so that learning can be turned into practice. Bangladesh Journal of Medical Education Vol.11(1) 2020: 3-11


2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 446-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMONA GIORDANO

The importance of humanities in the medical curriculum is increasingly recognized. For example, in the United Kingdom, The General Medical Council (GMC), which is an independent body established under the Medical Act 1858 and responsible, among other things, for fostering good medical practice and promoting high standards of medical education, in its publication Tomorrow’s Doctors, encouraged inclusion of humanities in the medical curriculum. Literature, arts, poetry, and philosophy are thought to foster the doctors’ ability to “communicate with patients, to penetrate more deeply into the patient’s wider narrative, and to seek more diverse ways of promoting well being and reducing the impact of illness or disability.”


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sneha Barai

UNSTRUCTURED The UK General Medical Council (GMC) explicitly states doctors have a duty to ‘contribute to teaching and training…by acting as a positive role model’. However, recent studies suggest some are not fulfilling this, which is impacting medical students' experiences and attitudes during their training. As such, doctors have a duty to act as role models and teachers, as specified by the GMC, which it seems are not currently being fulfilled. This would improve the medical students’ learning experiences and demonstrate good professional values for them to emulate. Therefore, these duties should be as important as patient care, since this will influence future generations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Malpass ◽  
Kate Binnie ◽  
Lauren Robson

Medical school can be a stressful experience for students, resulting in stress-related mental health problems. Policy recommendations from the General Medical Council (GMC), the body responsible for improving medical education in the UK, recommend the use of mindfulness training to increase well-being and resilience to stress. Students participating in an eight-week mindfulness training between Autumn 2011 and Spring 2015 were invited to complete a free text survey at the end of their mindfulness course. In addition, six qualitative interviews were conducted lasting between 60 and 90 minutes. Interviews used a topic guide and were recorded and transcribed verbatim. We used the framework approach to analyse the data. Students reported a new relationship to their thoughts and feelings which gave a greater sense of control and resiliency, an ability to manage their workload better, and more acceptance of their limitations as learners. The small group context was important. Students described improved empathy and communication skills through building inner awareness of thoughts and feelings, noticing judgments, and developing attentive observation. The findings show how resiliency and coping reserve can be developed within medical education and the role of mindfulness in this process. We present a conceptual model of a learnt cycle of specific vulnerability and describe how MBCT intercepts at various junctures in this self-reinforcing cycle through the development of new coping strategies that embrace an “allowed vulnerability.”


1987 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 272-273
Author(s):  
C. P. Seager

The General Medical Council published Recommendations on Basic Medical Education in which the principles of the Pre-registration House Officer post were updated. An important provision was the acceptance of a variety of combinations of posts including four months in general medicine, four months in general surgery and four months in another clinical hospital discipline or in a health centre.


2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 192-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. A. Jackson ◽  
D. J. R. Evans

The General Medical Council states that United Kingdom graduates must function effectively as educators. There is a growing body of evidence showing that medical students can be included as teachers within a medical curriculum. Our aim was to design and implement a near-peer-led teaching program in an undergraduate medical curriculum and assess its acceptability among year 1 students. Students received six tutorials focusing on aspects of cardiac, respiratory, and blood physiology. Tutorials ran alongside standard module teaching. Students were taught in groups of ∼30 students/group, and an active teaching approach was used in sessions where possible. Using anonymous evaluations, student feedback was collected for the program overall and for each tutorial. The program was voluntary and open to all first-year students, and 94 (of 138) medical students from year 1 at Brighton and Sussex Medical School were recruited to the study. The tutorial program was popular among students and was well attended throughout. Individual tutorial and overall program quantitative and qualitative feedback showed that students found the tutorials very useful in consolidating material taught within the module. Students found the small group and active teaching style of the near-peer tutors very useful to facilitating their learning experience. The end-of-module written examination scores suggest that the tutorials may have had a positive effect on student outcome compared with previous student attainment. In conclusion, the present study shows that a near-peer tutorial program can be successfully integrated into a teaching curriculum. The feedback demonstrates that year 1 students are both receptive and find the additional teaching of benefit.


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