How we involved rural clinicians in teaching ethics to medical students on rural clinical placements

Abstract

Background: The task of engaging senior medical students in ethical inquiry while on rural clinical placements has received minimal attention in the medical education literature. As there is an international trend for medical students to undertake part or all of their clinical training in rural areas, the need to deliver clinically relevant ethics teaching in a sustainable manner has emerged as a challenge for medical schools. Clinicians tend to be hesitant about delivering this kind of teaching.

What we did: We introduced a novel teaching program which involved recruiting, training and supporting experienced rural clinicians to facilitate a series of Rural Ethics Ward Rounds with the senior medical students on extended rural placements.

Evaluation: The clinical facilitators expressed some initial uncertainty with the teaching model, but generally reported a positive experience, including significant professional benefits such as increased ethical awareness and opportunity for self-reflection.

Conclusion: This model enables experienced rural clinicians to facilitate student development in ethical awareness and skill, and requires relatively low demands on academic time and resources.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Ethics Facilitators for their time and valuable contributions to this project, and Dr Lesley Forster and the staff of the UNSW Rural Clinical School, for their co-operation and support.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

This study was approved by the Medical and Community Human Research Ethics Advisory Panel of the University of New South Wales (2012-7/07).