Abstract
ObjectivesMany medical schools in Taiwan have adopted a dignified “silent mentor” initiation ceremony to strengthen student’s medical humanity and increase their learning attitudes. This ceremony consists of introductions of the body donor’s conduct and deeds, wreath-laying, and a tea party. However, few empirical studies have examined the influences of the ceremony and dissection on medical humanity. This study explored if the initiation ceremony and the course can help students care more about others, develop more positive attitudes toward death, improve learning effectiveness in the course, and decrease negative emotions the first time they see a cadaver.MethodsThe Attitudes Towards Death and Love and Care subscales of the life attitude inventory, Learning Effectiveness of Gross Anatomy Laboratory Scale (LEGALS), and Emotional Reactions Towards Cadavers Scale were adopted to examine differences before (T1) and after (T2) medical students attended an initiation ceremony at a university in northern Taiwan. Whether these effects lasted to the end of the semester (T3) was also tested.ResultsAfter the ceremony, students’ attitudes towards death increased, negative emotions towards cadavers decreased, but love and care and the LEGALS did not significantly change. Data from T3 showed a similar pattern, but high-level emotions (e.g., being respected, cherished, and grateful) and the LEGALS were significantly higher than those at T1.DiscussionThe initiation ceremony, which showed a body donor’s deeds and attitudes toward life and death when they were alive, could help medical students gain more mature attitudes towards death and decreased negative emotions. Learning between T2 and T3 might have caused significant changes in high-level emotions and the LEGALS at T3. Arranging reflective writing with guided discussion by a teacher before and after the ceremony is highly recommended.
Highlights
Since the second half of the twentieth century, the curriculum of medical humanities has gained in importance as a part of medical education
The results of paired t-tests showed that the level of Attitudes Towards Death remained increased (t = −6.28, df = 131, p < .001), and the level of negative emotions toward cadavers remained decreased 3 months after the ceremony (t = 6.71, df = 135, p < .001)
Our results showed that the negative emotions were weak, and initiation ceremony further reduced those weak uncomfortable feelings
Summary
Since the second half of the twentieth century, the curriculum of medical humanities has gained in importance as a part of medical education. There have been some reflections on medical humanities education in Taiwan since the 1990s: most courses are confined to the first two school years of medical students and conducted under the concept of general education, but students are not interested in these courses [3, 4]. This conventional practice, on the one hand, truncates medical students’ learning processes into two parts, basic medical science and medical humanities. One feasible solution is to reform the curriculum itself, shifting from “medical humanities in lecture” to “medical humanities in practice.”
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