Effect of a patient-led educational session on pre-clerkship students’ learning of professional values and on their professional development

Figures & data

Table 1. Student learning pertaining to professional values.

Professional value	Representative Quotes
Humanism -Seeing the whole person and not just the disease -Providing family centered care -Empathy and compassion	‘I am grateful that they were able to present their story to us and give all of us medical students an ability to actually put faces to certain diagnosis. I feel as if while in medical school we start to forget sometimes the significant impact these diseases have on individual lives’
Excellence -Duty towards patients -Research as a means to improve patient care -Competence and lifelong learning -Acknowledging limitations of science and of health care providers -Team work	‘After reflecting more on this case and accepting that I will not ever know everything, I realized that perhaps as a physician, my most important role will be to continue to fight for my patient if I know something is wrong, even if I don’t know the answer, because someone will and that persistence is what will save a child’s life’
Accountability	‘Learning about this orphan disease, how many lives are still affected had us thinking that these should not be ignored and that we should start doing something about this. We were talking about the possibility of starting a student interest group on campus to increase awareness of these different orphan diseases’
Altruism	‘I aspire to serve my patients and carry this burden, so they don’t have to and, so they can rely on someone during their periods of isolation and health crisis’

Table 2. Themes and subthemes related to the effect of the patient-led educational session on students’ professional identity.

Themes	Subthemes	Representative Quotes
Becoming legitimate participants in caring for patients	-The importance of pre-clerkship foundational learning -Benefits of contextual learning -Ambiguity in medical practice -Balancing idealism with reality -Duty towards patients - Importance of clinician role models	‘There are many times as a medical student that I feel overwhelmed by the wealth of material we learn each and every day. However, being able to hear the xxx family’s story reminded me why everything we learn is so critically important to our future caregiving as physicians and health care providers.’ ‘Although it is impossible to have all the possible differentials at your fingertips at all times, the thoroughness of Dr.xxx’s work with the xxx family gives me something to strive for within my medical career’
Variable personal reactions	-Motivation and inspiration to grow and/or advocate	‘From their stories, I hope to remain receptive to feedback and appreciative of when my patients engage me in my decision making so I can, not only remain vigilant, but also involve them in their own care and treatment plan, which has been shown to improve patient outcomes’
	-Questioning without commitment	‘One of the questions I have always had is how to tell patients that their physician has no idea what is going on with them. It is difficult for us medical students to understand the balance the desire to not lose the faith of our patients and admitting that we do not have all the answers’
	-Sense of helplessness	‘Even in our doctoring classes, the discussion is constrained to things that we learned recently, and the course coordinator has a piece of paper with the answer. At least he or she knows the answer we are supposed to reach. The fact that it will not always be so in the real world, is a scary thought’