Educational framework to train undergraduate medical students in ethics and professionalism in India

Abstract

As important as it is that medical doctors must possess comprehensive knowledge and desired skills while interacting with their patients, equal importance must be given to a professional approach and ethical conduct by them. Ethics in the medical curriculum has been explicitly stated, but it would not be wrong to state that exposure to medical ethics has been confined to the time frame when Forensic Medicine is delivered to the students. On the other hand, professionalism in the medical curriculum still remains part of the hidden curriculum, and no specific timeframe has been allocated for the training and assessment of professionalism. Realizing the prevailing lacuna in medical colleges with reference to the training in ethics and professionalism, there is an indispensable need to introduce structured training for undergraduate medical students. To conclude, acknowledging the importance of ethics and professionalism in successful clinical practice, there is an immense need to initiate a systematic educational program targeting ethics and professionalism. The proposed educational program is a holistic and systematic initiative to longitudinally expose medical students to the intricacies of medical ethics and practice professional behaviors.