Abstract
PurposeThis follow-up study focused on 3 overarching questions: what keywords can be extracted from experts’ definitions of character?; what is the operational definition of character for medical students?; and what possible solutions can be suggested to address the issues of character education that were identified in the previous study?MethodsSixty-three medical education experts recruited through expert sampling and 19 non-medical education experts recruited through snowball sampling answered a questionnaire that addressed the 3 major questions of the study. The responses were analyzed for descriptive statistics with supplementary keyword extraction tools, including the Cortical and Monkey keyword extractors.ResultsA total of 93 definitional statements were counted, and 138 keyword terms were extracted. The top 5 keyword terms mentioned by the medical education experts were “patient”, “empathy”, “qualities”, “attitude”, and “ability”. These keyword terms were quite different from those mentioned by the non-medical education experts. Based on the extracted keywords, an operational definition of character education by the medical education expert group was presented as follows: the basic qualities and ability to empathize with patients affected by illness based on respect for patients and others. Various methods were proposed to solve the issue of character education, and many of them pointed to curriculum development, such as improvements in teaching and learning methods and evaluation methods, including role modeling.ConclusionA clear statement of the concept of character education is the start to resolve issues of character education. Character education improvements will be possible at the institutional level according to the above results.
Highlights
Physicians, and medical students' issues concerning their character or professionalism, which have been continuously published in the media for decades [1,2,3], is the hot potato we have to face bluntly
Purpose: As a follow-up study, it focused on 3 overarching questions: first, what kind of keywords can be extracted from the experts’ definitions of character?; second, what is the operational definition of character for medical students?; and third, what are the possible solutions suggested to the issues of character education that were found in the previous study? Methods: Sixty-three medical education experts through expert sampling method and an addition of 19 non-medical education experts through snowball sampling method answered the questionnaire
1) What kind of keywords can be extracted from the experts’ definitions of character? 2) What is the operational definition of character for medical students? 3) What possible solutions suggested to the problems of character education found in the previous study?
Summary
Background: Physicians, and medical students' issues concerning their character or professionalism, which have been continuously published in the media for decades [1,2,3], is the hot potato we have to face bluntly. The step will be to identify what education is needed to educate our medical students as those 'good doctors'. There could be many aspects and contents of medical education for bringing up 'good doctors', and medical professionalism was once the keyword in medical education along with medical humanities [6,7]. Responding to this tide of a wave, all medical schools in Korea have organized and emphasized the development of medical education or medical humanities departments and curriculums during the last two decades [8]. The issues of character and medical professionalism never died away
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