Abstract
PurposeRelationship boundaries recognition is an essential element of medical practice. The aim of the study was to assess final year medical students’ perceived need for education regarding professional boundaries.Materials and methodsThis was a cross-sectional study. An anonymous paper questionnaire was distributed to 128 final year medical students. Standard descriptive statistics, unpaired t-test to evaluate differences between male and female groups and Pearson correlation to determine relationships between variables were used.ResultsThe survey was completed by 84.4% of students who identified the need for more emphasis in the curriculum for all of topics during training and practice pertaining to boundaries and relationships (mean 6.61±1.32 on a scale of 0 to 9; and 6.66±1.27 respectively). Topics with a high interest ranking requiring additional attention were mistreatment of medical students (mean 7.22±1.96), coping with mistakes in clinical care (mean 7.25±1.63), reporting of medical mistakes (mean 7.58±1.36), and gender bias in clinical care (mean 7.10±1.82). Women perceived a greater need for attention to all topics in the curriculum. Significant differences between the perceptions of female and male students were observed regarding topics such as responding to an impaired colleague (p<0.001), and a physician’s social responsibilities (p = 0.001).ConclusionMedical students recognized the need for more education and training in the undergraduate medical ethics curriculum regarding patient-physician relationship boundaries.
Highlights
Boundaries perception and appreciation of cultural norms are merits that guides acceptable professional conduct in medical practice. [1, 2] It has been shown that the main reasons for physician disciplinary actions includes needless prescription, violations of boundaries with patients, and fraud. [3] It has been evident that deficiency in professionalism among medical students are early signals for unsafe clinical performance. [4] In contemporary medical practice; patient care is a shared responsibility between patients, physicians, and allied health professionals; professional boundaries are complex
An anonymous paper questionnaire was distributed to 128 final year medical students
Medical students recognized the need for more education and training in the undergraduate medical ethics curriculum regarding patient-physician relationship boundaries
Summary
Boundaries perception and appreciation of cultural norms are merits that guides acceptable professional conduct in medical practice. [1, 2] It has been shown that the main reasons for physician disciplinary actions includes needless prescription, violations of boundaries with patients, and fraud. [3] It has been evident that deficiency in professionalism among medical students are early signals for unsafe clinical performance. [4] In contemporary medical practice; patient care is a shared responsibility between patients, physicians (who are often from different medical specialties), and allied health professionals; professional boundaries are complex. Based on available evidence featuring medical students’ recognition of greater needs for ethical and professional training [8,9,10,11,12] along with concerns for not being able to maintain some of their doctor-patient relationship scopes. We assessed the perceptions of clinical medical students in final years (in ‘clerkships’) regarding relationship boundaries, an area that has received little attention in medical education research. We explored the differences between subgroups and examined correlations that may explain students’ views about educational need for issues pertaining to relationship boundaries. This study was conducted based on expectation that an understanding of medical students’ experiences and perspectives with regard to professional boundaries may help promote favorable medical practice
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