Reviewing undergraduate medical education programs (V)
Jasmine Owyong1, Tan Xuan Yu1, Lalit Krishna1,2,3, Mun Kit Wong1,2, Daniel Zhi Hao Hong1,2, Jiaxuan Wu1,2, Jacquelin Jia Qi Ting1,2, National Cancer Centre Singapore 2, 3, Liverpool United Kingdom 1National Cancer Centre Singapore Singapore2National University of Singapore Singapore3University of Liverpool Liverpool, United Kingdom
Abstract
Background
Ethics education in medical school ensures medical students are equipped with the knowledge and skills to face complex ethical issues. However, such training remains variable amidst evolving considerations that inform training across different healthcare systems. A review was proposed to map how undergraduate medical schools teach and assess ethics.
Methods
Using Krishna’s Systematic Evidence-Based Approach (SEBA), two concurrent systematic scoping reviews were carried out – one on ethics teaching and another on their assessment. Following a search on various databases of articles published in the last 30 years, data was analyzed using thematic and content analysis.
Results
Scrutinizing the two sets of full-text articles identified similar themes and categories, including teaching modalities, curriculum content, enablers and barriers to teaching, assessment methods, and their pros and cons.
Conclusion
The review revealed the importance of adopting an interactive, multimodal and interdisciplinary team-teaching approach to ethics education, involving partners and faculty trained in ethics, law, communication, professionalism, and other interprofessional teams. Conscientious effort should also include integrating ethics into formal medical curricula, ensuring contextualization and application of ethics knowledge, skills and attitudes, and protected time and adequate resources. A stage-based multimodal assessment approach should be appropriately utilized to evaluate knowledge acquisition, application and reflection across various settings. To scaffold personalized development plans and remediation efforts, multisource evaluations may be stored in a centralized portfolio. Whilst standardization of curricula content ensures cross-specialty ethical proficiency, deliberative curriculum inquiry performed by faculty members using a Delphi approach may facilitate the narrowing of relevant topics.
Biography
Tan Xuan Yu is a Year 2 MBBS Student at the National University of Singapore. He is an active member of the Palliative Medicine Initiative, contributing to medical education research in the National Cancer Centre of Singapore.