Medical education
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Rather than merely acting professionally, medical students are expected to become professionals. Developing an embodied professional persona is not straightforward as there is no single perspective of what medical professionalism comprises. In the context of this confusion, medical educationalists have been charged with developing a professionalism curriculum that emphasises, supports and measures students' professionalism. This paper focuses on medical students' discourses of medical professionalism in order to understand the means through which students conceptualise professionalism. ⋯ Providing students with opportunities to engage in active sense-making activities within the formal professional curriculum can encourage an embodied and sophisticated understanding of professionalism.
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Sexual harassment in medical education has been studied in the Americas, Europe and Asia; however, little is known about sexual harassment in Middle Eastern cultures. Our initial aim was to describe the sexual harassment of female doctors-in-training by male patients and their relatives in Turkey. During our analysis of data, we expanded our objectives to include the formulation of a framework that can provide a theoretical background to enhance medical educators' understanding of sexual harassment across cultures. ⋯ We relate our findings to issues of patriarchy, power and socio-cultural influences that impact both the perpetrator and the target of sexual harassment. Medical educators are responsible for the control and prevention of sexual harassment of students. The globalisation of medical education requires that medical educators use a multi-cultural approach which considers socio-cultural influences and the diversity of female and male students' actions and perceptions of sexual harassment.
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The objectives of this study were to determine the extent to which clinician-educators agree on definitions of critical thinking and to determine whether their descriptions of critical thinking in clinical practice are consistent with these definitions. ⋯ If we are to foster critical thinking among medical students, we must reconcile the way it is defined with the manner in which clinician-educators describe critical thinking--and its absence--in action. Such a reconciliation would include consideration of clinicians' sensitivity to complexity and their inclination to exert cognitive effort, in addition to their ability to master material and process information.
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Evidence suggests that doctors and nurses do not always work collaboratively in health care settings and that this contributes to suboptimal patient care. However, there is little information on interprofessional collaboration (IPC) among new medical and nursing graduates working together for the first time in a multidisciplinary health care team. Our aim was to understand the nature of the interactions, activities and issues affecting these new graduates in order to inform interventions to improve IPC in this context. ⋯ Our data highlight the professionalism, respect and adaptability of these junior health professionals. We document the types of collaborative activities and tensions relevant in this context and, based on our findings, provide some strategies for improving IPC.