Abstract
BackgroundMedical television programs offer students fictional representations of their chosen career. This study aimed to discover undergraduate medical students' viewing of medical television programs and students' perceptions of professionalism, ethics, realism and role models in the programs. The purpose was to consider implications for teaching strategies.MethodsA medical television survey was administered to 386 undergraduate medical students across Years 1 to 4 at a university in New South Wales, Australia. The survey collected data on demographics, year of course, viewing of medical television programs, perception of programs' realism, depiction of ethics, professionalism and role models.ResultsThe shows watched by most students were House, Scrubs, and Grey's Anatomy, and students nominated watching 30 different medical programs in total. There was no statistical association between year of enrolment and perceptions of accuracy. The majority of students reported that friends or family members had asked them for their opinion on an ethical or medical issue presented on a program, and that they discussed ethical and medical matters with their friends. Students had high recall of ethical topics portrayed on the shows, and most believed that medical programs generally portrayed ideals of professionalism well.ConclusionsMedical programs offer considerable currency and relevance with students and may be useful in teaching strategies that engage students in ethical lessons about practising medicine.
Highlights
Medical television programs offer students fictional representations of their chosen career
Another similarity between our research and Czarny et al.’s [4] study was a high recall of ethical issues in both samples, our sample showed a higher proportion of students watching medical programs and recalling ethical issues
Our results show that students rated ER highly for its perceived realism, which is perhaps due to its age - which may be likely to bestow more credibility given it was a long-running program - and its focus on a team of doctors working on cases, rather than one or two dominant characters and medical cases as on more recent programs
Summary
Medical television programs offer students fictional representations of their chosen career. Images of medical doctors in popular culture may have some influence on students’ professional identity, in television programs. Research suggests that medical televisual texts can affect students’ expectations of the medical profession, whereby fictional doctors in programs such as ER may influence medical students’ perceptions and beliefs in a similar way to the real doctors they encounter [2]. These images can potentially help to shape students’. Some researchers suggest the programs can positively influence students and are useful teaching strategies [4,5]. Other research raises concerns about negative aspects of television programs [10,11,12,13,14], suggesting they may be irrelevant and unrealistic at best and harmful and dangerous at worst
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