Unclear if future physicians are learning about patient-centred care: Content analysis of curriculum at 16 medical schools

Abstract

Purpose Given barriers of patient-centred care (PCC) among physicians and trainees, this study assessed how medical schools addressed PCC in curriculum. Method The authors used content analysis to describe PCC in publicly-available curriculum documents of Canadian medical schools guided by McCormack’s PCC Framework, and reported results using summary statistics and text examples. Results The authors retrieved 1459 documents from 16 medical schools (median 49.5, range 16–301). Few mentioned PCC (301, 21.2%), and even fewer thoroughly or accurately described PCC. Significantly more clerkship versus pre-clerkship (24.0% vs 12.6%, p < 0.00001), and elective compared with core course descriptions (24.7% vs 14.9%, p < 0.00001) mentioned PCC. The domain of foster a healing relationship was common (79.0%) compared with other domains: address concerns (16.5%), exchange information (14.9%), enable self-care (10.4%), share decisions (4.5%), and manage uncertainty (1.3%). Conclusions Overall, few documents mentioned or described PCC or related concepts. This varied by school, and was more frequent in clerkship and elective courses, suggesting that student exposure may be brief and variable. Thus, it remains unclear if medical students are fully exposed to what PCC means and how to implement it. Future research is needed to confirm if PCC content in medical curriculum is lacking.