Selecting and Performing Service-Learning in a Team-Based Learning Format Fosters Dissonance, Reflective Capacity, Self-Examination, Bias Mitigation, and Compassionate Behavior in Prospective Medical Students

Alexis Horst, Brian D. Schwartz, Jenifer A. Fisher, Nicole Michels and Lon J. Van Winkle
Additional contact information
Alexis Horst: Department of Medical Humanities, Rocky Vista University, 8401 S. Chambers Road, Parker, CO 80134, USA
Brian D. Schwartz: Department of Medical Humanities, Rocky Vista University, 8401 S. Chambers Road, Parker, CO 80134, USA
Jenifer A. Fisher: Department of Medical Humanities, Rocky Vista University, 8401 S. Chambers Road, Parker, CO 80134, USA
Nicole Michels: Department of Medical Humanities, Rocky Vista University, 8401 S. Chambers Road, Parker, CO 80134, USA
Lon J. Van Winkle: Department of Medical Humanities, Rocky Vista University, 8401 S. Chambers Road, Parker, CO 80134, USA

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 20, 1-18

Abstract: More compassionate behavior should make both patients and their providers happier and healthier. Consequently, work to increase this behavior ought to be a major component of premedical and medical education. Interactions between doctors and patients are often less than fully compassionate owing to implicit biases against patients. Such biases adversely affect treatment, adherence, and health outcomes. For these reasons, we studied whether selecting and performing service-learning projects by teams of prospective medical students prompts them to write reflections exhibiting dissonance, self-examination, bias mitigation, dissonance reconciliation, and compassionate behavior. Not only did these students report changes in their behavior to become more compassionate, but their reflective capacity also grew in association with selecting and performing team service-learning projects. Components of reflective capacity, such as reflection-on-action and self-appraisal, correlated strongly with cognitive empathy (a component of compassion) in these students. Our results are, however, difficult to generalize to other universities and other preprofessional and professional healthcare programs. Hence, we encourage others to test further our hypothesis that provocative experiences foster frequent self-examination and more compassionate behavior by preprofessional and professional healthcare students, especially when teams of students are free to make their own meaning of, and build trust and psychological safety in, shared experiences.

Keywords: critical reflection; professional development; medical humanities; reflection-on-action; self-appraisal; team-based learning; humanistic values; empathy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/20/3926/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/20/3926/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:20:p:3926-:d:276929

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().