Trigger films to teach core competencies of ethics and professionalism to first-year medical and nursing students

Professionalism and communication were formally introduced in India's Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) as part of the five roles of an Indian medical graduate and 10 core competencies in the Bachelor of Science Nursing program. It may be challenging to teach the complexity of clinical medical ethics to undergraduate students at a young age in the absence of direct patient interaction. Trigger films (TFs) are brief (3-10 min) clips that have been used in the West to provoke debate, promote reflection, and assist trainees in dealing with ethical dilemmas. The aim of this study was to determine whether TFs can be used to teach professionalism and ethics to undergraduate medical and nursing students as an innovative and interesting tool and to see whether this results in any changes in knowledge. A 2-h module supported by an introductory PowerPoint presentation and using four TFs on the four pillars of ethics (beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, and justice) was developed and piloted in the foundation course for the new cohort of medical and nursing students. Quantitative, open-ended feedback was taken from learners after module delivery, and knowledge was assessed with a retrospective pre-post questionnaire. The majority of students found TFs an innovative and interesting tool to teach medical ethics. There was a gain in knowledge of autonomy (52%), beneficence (48%), nonmaleficence (46%), and justice (38%). TFs can be effective tools to impart core competencies in ethics and professionalism to both nursing and medical students in the new CBC. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Teaching ethics is an important part of the medical curriculum, and since first-year students are not in direct contact with patients it is necessary to think of innovative methods that can be used to teach. We have done the pilot testing for the same, using trigger films among undergraduate medical and nursing students.