English

Abstract

BACKGROUND Medical education curriculum in India focuses on the clinical skills of the medical students as cornerstone, but patient and patient party dealings and to work as a member of health care provider team, one requires communication skills, interpersonal skills, management skills, professionalism and ethics. Teaching learning methods (TLM) for imparting module of professionalism and ethics have to be innovative and nonconventional also. In the present study, we tend to assess the effectiveness of exposure to realistic clinical scenarios in pathology department, in teaching medical ethics and professionalism, to undergraduate medical students. METHODS This is an experimental, interventional study that included 200 students. All have attended “just-in-time” lectures on attitude, communication, professionalism and ethics (AETCOM) delivered by faculties. After the 15 days of lecture session, all the students were assessed about their skill of AETCOM by conducting objective structured practical examination (OSPE). In the next phase exposure to realistic clinical scenarios in the Departmental laboratory of Pathology, under the guidance of faculties was also arranged. After the exposure session to real life scenario, all the students were assessed about their skill of AETCOM again by conducting OSPE and their performance was compared with the previous OSPE score. Feedback from the exposed students was also taken in prescribed proforma of 7-point Likert scale. RESULTS Mean pre exposure OSPE score was 18.66 and mean post exposure OSPE score was 27.22. The result shows that the difference was significant (P < 0.001). 38.5 % students were extremely satisfied with the experience of exposure to real life situation in pathology lab and 50 % students were very satisfied with the experience of exposure. In the present study, mean learning gain is 77 %. CONCLUSIONS Professionalism and ethics should neither be introduced in isolation from other medical graduation course contents nor be assessed so. It should be coherently assimilated with the current curriculum. KEYWORDS Communication Skills, Interpersonal Skills, Professionalism, Ethics, Teaching Learning Methods (TLM)