Prospective Randomised Controlled Trial of Teaching Medical Students Behavioural Sciences

Abstract

Background: In the last few decades, medical professionalismcame upas a challenging issue to teach and assess.
Objective: To compare the level of understanding of the medical professionalism, medical ethics and human rights among the first year and fifth year medical students at Omdurman Islamic University in Sudan.
Methods: Prospective randomised controlled trial. Students were randomized in to four groups during teaching of behavioural sciences which was given at different spectra in the different groups. Responders were 365(91.25%), they were 143(39.2%) first year males, 141(38.6%) first year females split in two groups and 81(22.2%) fifth year mixed male and female.Conceptual understanding of medical ethics, professionalism, human rights and the religion values as part of the university requirement were assessed with a pretested questionnaire.
Results: Of the fifth year students 69(86.3%) were able to describe triggering organisational help for patients as an advocacy and 119(83.2%) first year male students were able to identify that availing medical facilities to the disabled and the vulnerable groupsas basic human right. The
majority (>90%) of all students were described well professional integrity and 132(93%) of first year medical students were able mention correctly the differences between the Healer and the professional and 83(58.5%) of fifth year students specified the confidentiality issue in taking informed consent, respectively. However, the students' categorised the regulation of organ transplantation and tissue engineering has human rights followed by Religion Teachings bases.
Conclusion: Teaching medical ethics, human rights, professionalism and University requirements to the first year medical students and gains during the practical experience of the clinical clerkship have a considerable impact on the student perception of these subjects. Gains are expected to improve if these issues are integrated in all areas of the curriculum.

Key words: Professionalism, Human rights, Medical ethics, medical students