Obstetrics and gynecology (Ob/Gyn) is fraught with bioethical issues, the professional significance of which may vary based on clinical experience. Our objective was to utilize our novel ethics curriculum to identify ethics and professionalism issues highlighted by Ob/Gyn learners and to compare responses between learner levels in order to further inform curricular development.
Introduction of an integrated and dynamic Ob/Gyn ethics and professionalism curriculum and mixed methods analysis of 181 resulting written reflections (case observation and assessments) from 3(rd) year medical students and from 1(st) - 4(th) year Ob/Gyn residents. Content was compared by learner level using basic thematic analysis and summary statistics.
Within the 7 major ethics and professionalism domains, learners wrote most frequently about miscellaneous Ob/Gyn issues such as peri-viability and abortion (22% of students, 20% of residents) and about problematic treatment decisions (20% of students, 19% of residents) rather than professional duty, communication, justice, student/resident specific issues and quality of care. The most commonly discussed Ob/Gyn area by both learner groups was obstetrics rather than gynecology, gynecologic oncology or reproductive endocrinology and infertility, though residents were more likely to discuss obstetrics-related concerns than students (65% v. 48%, p=0.04) and students wrote about gynecologic oncology-related concerns more frequently than residents (25% v. 6%, p=0.002). In their reflections, sources of ethical value (such as the 4 classic ethics principles, professional guidelines, and consequentialism) were cited more frequently and in greater number by students than by residents (82% of students cited at least 1 source of ethical value v. 65% of residents, p=0.01). Residents disagreed more frequently with the ethical propriety of clinical management than did students (67% v. 43%, p=0.005).
Our study introduces an innovative and dynamic approach to an Ob/Gyn ethics and professionalism curriculum that highlights important learner-identified ethics and professionalism issues both specific to Ob/Gyn and common to clinical medicine. Findings will help Ob/Gyn educators best utilize and refine this flexible curriculum such that it is appropriately focused on topics relevant to each learner level.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 28 August 2015.
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#24,753,774
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Outputs from American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology
#15,094
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#198,337
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Outputs of similar age from American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology
#106
of 139 outputs
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