Students’ experience of prison health education during medical school

Abstract

Background: Social responsibility and accountability can be important core values in medical education. At the University of British Columbia, undergraduate medical students engage in prison health community service-learning opportunities in regional correctional facilities.

Methods: To describe the impact of prison health exposure on pre-clinical medical students, in-depth individual interviews were conducted with individuals who had participated in a prison health medical education program. All interviews were transcribed verbatim, and interpretive descriptive methods were used to inductively derive thematic findings to describe students’ experiences.

Results: Major themes emerged as students reported how (1) exposure to incarcerated populations increases students’ insight into issues that diverse marginalized sub-populations encounter; (2) positive interactions with the incarcerated individuals enhances relationship building; (3) collaboration reinforces teamwork skills and (4) community placements garner important learning opportunities within the medical school curriculum.

Conclusions: Our findings demonstrated that pre-clinical exposure to incarcerated individuals and prison health education provided a unique setting for medical students to develop an increased sense of social responsibility and accountability.