Abstract
This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Background: Medical education, as with other areas of healthcare education, is susceptible to cheating, with national and international examples cited in the literature. There are documented examples in the lay press, but limited scholarly activity in the field, which can be a challenging area to research and tackle. We have begun to explicitly address academic integrity within our undergraduate curriculum, including a focus on plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and covert sharing of questions. We believe this is an important curricular topic as exhibiting unprofessional behaviours can correlate with professional practice and can potentially have implications for practitioners and patients. Aim: To present 12 tips on teaching academic integrity in the digital age to medical students. Method: The tips presented are based on our experiences of teaching academic digital integrity to medical students, primarily in the form of a scenario based quiz. We do also extrapolate from content on academic integrity elsewhere within our professionalism syllabus. Results: The tips suggest that early, contemporary and contextualised material that is co-produced with students may offer a useful prophylactic approach to teaching about academic integrity. Conclusions: The principles presented could be adapted to other healthcare students and settings, including postgraduate education.
Highlights
Undergraduate medical education is susceptible to various forms of cheating (Glick et al, 2001), with national and international examples documented (Kusnoor et al, 2013; Tonkin 2015)
Contemporary content maintains relevance, resonates with students and is more likely to produce lasting results on the student cohort (Goldenberg et al, 2018). An example of this includes a session we have introduced recently dedicated to social media and digital professionalism
Academic integrity is a significant issue within undergraduate medical education, which can have far reaching consequences for learners, patients and society
Summary
Undergraduate medical education is susceptible to various forms of cheating (Glick et al, 2001), with national and international examples documented (Kusnoor et al, 2013; Tonkin 2015). The University of Glasgow required their medical students to re-sit the end of year practical examination (objective structured clinical examination), following a small number of students using Facebook, WhatsApp and the University’s own messaging platform to share questions This led to the medical school declaring the results void (BBC, 2017). 2. Ensure there is professional role modelling by faculty Issues of academic integrity is not limited to students; there have been reports of educators colluding with cheating (Tonkin, 2015). Whilst serious penalties for cheating do exist, using negative outcomes as a deterrent are not viewed as effective methods to change behaviour and may even serve as a distractor (Tonkin, 2015); our aim is to allow students very early in their apprenticeships, to understand their professional responsibilities, potential sequelae of misdemeanours and the relevance to patients and the profession. We assign a personal tutor throughout their medical school careers, as well as having regular contact with dedicated professionalism tutors
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