Student perceptions: Background to a new ethics curriculum in Indian medical colleges

Strengthening of early children's character education stunting children in Indonesia

BACKGROUND

Forming human resources (HR) with character is challenged by social phenomena that show degradation of morality, ethics, and morals, as well as violent extremism. This is the basic reason for the importance of the strengthening character education (SCE) movement, which involves education units, families, and communities, and education must be implemented from early childhood, especially for children who are stunted. This study aimed to describe how the strategy for SCE is based on early childhood education classes for stunted children.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This type of research is qualitative research with a phenomenological approach. The participants in this study were the headmaster and teachers of Kindergarten PGRI Donggala Regency, Indonesia, in 2022. Collecting data using a questionnaire was equipped with interviews. The data were analyzed by content analysis, namely the process of identifying, coding, and categorizing important patterns from the results of in-depth interviews.

RESULTS

The results of the study showed various patterns that became research themes as strategies for strengthening SCE in early childhood including integrating character values in learning for stunted children, introduction of SCE to stunted children, SCE habituation to stunted children, strengthening SCE for stunted children, and reflection on SCE for stunted children. Various character values produced in SCE include religiosity, creativity, curiosity, hard work, honesty, discipline, friendship, social care, independence, and responsibility.

CONCLUSIONS

Each school for early childhood has a learning program that focuses on developing children's abilities in terms of motor, cognitive, social-emotional, language, and religious and moral values. However, schools must also have an adequate character education program, especially in dealing with children who are stunted, social-emotional, language, and religious and moral values.

Perception of newly graduated physicians toward ethical education in medical schools: a Brazilian cross-sectional nationwide study

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this study was to evaluate fresh medical graduates' perceptions regarding the general aspects of ethics teaching in Brazilian medical schools.

METHODS

A structured questionnaire was applied to 4,601 participants among the 16,323 physicians who registered in one of the 27 Regional Medical Councils of Brazil in 2015. Answers to four questions regarding general aspects of ethics education in medical school were analyzed. Sampling procedures involved two stratification variables: legal nature (public vs. private) of medical schools and monthly household income higher than 10 minimum wages.

RESULTS

A large percentage of the participants had witnessed unethical behaviors during contact with patients (62.0%), toward coworkers (51.5%), and in relationships with patients' families (34.4%) over the course of their medical training. Even though most of the responders (72.0%) totally agreed that patient-physician relationship and humanities education were part of their medical school curriculum, important topics such as conflicts of interest and end-of-life education were not satisfactorily addressed in the participants' medical training. Statistically significant differences were found between the answers of public and private school graduates.

CONCLUSION

Despite great efforts to improve medical ethics education, our findings suggest the persistence of deficits and inadequacies in the ethics training currently given in medical schools in Brazil. Further modifications in ethics training must be made to address the deficiencies shown in this study. This process should be accompanied by continuous evaluation.

Perception on medical ethics in teaching among medical students in India

The importance of teaching medical ethics has emerged as a priority in recent decades. It is of interest to document data on the perceptions of the medical students on teaching professionalism and medical ethics during the foundation course using a validated questionnaire. The Cross sectional study was conducted a Medical college in South India consisted of 150 first year MBBS Students. We received 133 responses ,40% of the students agreed that medical ethics is just a common sense, Many students (80%) agreed that the topics taught during these medical ethics sessions were relevant , easy to comprehend, teaching learning methods adopted were appropriate and they were able to participate and engage in the teaching learning activity. Majority felt that the sessions created awareness about the ethical dilemmas that might arise during patient encounters and these sessions will help them to give a justified response and agreed that these sessions made them understand the foundations of philosophical, social and legal aspects of medical ethics and also motivated them to learn more about this medical ethics .Education in medical ethics is important to practise professionally and will improve their personality skills. Suggestions given to improve ethics teaching were to increase case based discussions, reflections by the senior faculty, movie demonstrations. Students identified importance of ethics education in current day and also favoured interactive methods of teaching for the delivery of ethics related competency.