Definition of character for medical education based on the expert opinion in Korea

Abstract

Purpose: As a follow-up study, it focused on 3 overarching questions: first, what kind of keywords can be extracted from the experts’ definitions of character?; second, what is the operational definition of character for medical students?; and third, what are the possible solutions suggested to the issues of character education that were found in the previous study? Methods: Sixty-three medical education experts through expert sampling method and an addition of 19 non-medical education experts through snowball sampling method answered the questionnaire. It consisted of 3 major questions of the study. The responses were analyzed for descriptive statistics with supplementary keyword extraction tools including Cortical and Monkey keyword extractor. Results: A total of 93 statements of definition were counted, and a total of 138 keyword terms were extracted. The top 5 keyword terms mentioned by the medical education experts were 'patient', 'empathy', 'qualities', 'attitude', and 'ability'. These keyword terms were quite different from the keywords mentioned by the non-medical education expert group. Based on the extracted keywords, an operational definition of character education by the medical education expert group was presented as follows: The basic qualities and ability to empathize with the patient's illness based on respect for patients and others. Various methods were proposed to solve the issue of character education, and many of them pointed to curriculum development, such as improvement of teaching and learning methods and evaluation methods, including role modeling.Conclusion: A clear statement of the concept of character education is the start to resolve issues of character education. Character education improvements will be possible at the institutional level according to the above results.