Abstract Manager

Dedicated Poster

LP9 - 07

Accept

I declare I have no actual or potential conflict of interest in relation to this program.

no

General Call (Workshop, Oral Presentation, Poster Presentation)

Poster

Education Innovation

Student

'Medical Education By and For Us': Using a Participatory Approach to Address Learner Mistreatment in Medical Education

Learner mistreatment is pervasive in medical education. Despite institutional efforts, medical students often report feeling disengaged or patronized by traditional curricular initiatives to prevent mistreatment. This is particularly true for learners from underrepresented and minoritized groups, whose experiences are seldom captured by dominant institutional narratives.

Using a Freirean dialogical and participatory approach, a team of diverse medical students collaborated with faculty and staff to co-develop a two-hour workshop on learner mistreatment. This novel workshop is newly included within the second year undergraduate MD curriculum; it features a didactic lecture, facilitated small-group discussion, and participatory interpersonal skills training. Using principles of participatory scholarship, learners were actively engaged from research to delivery: leading the literature review, developing the learning objectives, and co-facilitating small-group discussions.This approach enabled early feedback and the generation of shared insights; it challenged traditional power differentials of knowledge production. The design aimed to capture students' lived experiences and to reflect the nuances of navigating hidden curricula of medical education through a minoritized lens.

This Freirean-influenced model has implications for our local approach to medical education development. We advocate for the implementation of participatory design in all medical education initiatives that draws from lived experience, such as those related to professionalism, wellness, and cultural safety. This model could also be extended to development of 'medical expert' content, which has historically estranged learners and patients from the knowledge-production process.

Learner mistreatment

Participatory design

Curriculum development

Undergraduate

Curriculum

Student Affairs

Undergraduate

Leadership

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes