Abstract Manager

Oral

OB1-3-3

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)

Oral

Education Research

Student

yes

From Skillful to Empathetic: Shifting Medical Students' Perceptions of Surgeons through a Patient as Teacher program

Patient as the teacher (PAT) programs utilise a humanistic approach to medical education. Students attend sessions in which patients share their personal stories and perspectives on how their illness has impacted their lives. Students listen, engage in dialogue, and then use art as a means to reflect on how this has influenced their medical outlook. Evaluating the influence of such initiatives on desired outcomes of interest has proven challenging in the past. Our study uses a novel method to evaluate the effects of the PAT program on humanistic perspectives.

Students were asked to "list the top 5 attributes of a surgeon, in order of perceived importance" before and after the PAT program. The resulting attributes were coded as either "humanistic" or "non-humanistic" and analysed through an innovative model of qualitative data generation and Bayesian statistical approaches.

After participation in the PAT program students were nearly twice as likely to rank a humanistic characteristic as the most important attribute of a surgeon (OR 1.98, 85% CI 0.80-4.98). After participation in the PAT program, students were also 3.58 times more likely to rank a humanistic characteristic amongst their reported top three attributes for a surgeon (OR 3.58, 89% CI 1.60 - 8.85).

Our innovative statistical model supports the success of this educational PAT program in encouraging a humanistic perspective in surgery and can be used to evaluate the efficacy of new humanistic education initiatives amongst medical education.

Surgical Education

Patient Teachers

Medical Education

Undergraduate

Teaching and learning

Undergraduate

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes