Open AccessRelationships and boundaries: Learning needs and preferences in clerkship medical environments
Author(s) -
Tahra AlMahmoud,
M. Jawad Hashim,
Naghma Naeem,
Rabah Almahmoud,
Frank J. Branicki,
Margaret Elzubeir
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0236145
Subject(s) - curriculum , descriptive statistics , medical education , cross sectional study , medical psychology , psychology , scale (ratio) , perception , family medicine , medline , medicine , clinical psychology , pedagogy , statistics , physics , mathematics , pathology , quantum mechanics , neuroscience , political science , law
Purpose Relationship 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 methods This 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. Results The 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). Conclusion Medical students recognized the need for more education and training in the undergraduate medical ethics curriculum regarding patient-physician relationship boundaries.