title: Students' medical ethics rounds: a combinatorial program for medical ethics education.
abstract: It has long been a common goal for both medical educators and ethicists to develop effective methods or programs for medical ethics education. The current lecture-based courses of medical ethics programs in medical schools are demonstrated as insufficient models for training "good doctors''. In this study, we introduce an innovative program for medical ethics education in an extra-curricular student-based design named Students' Medical Ethics Rounds (SMER). In SMER, a combination of educational methods, including theater-based case presentation, large group discussion, expert opinions, role playing and role modeling were employed. The pretest-posttest experimental design was used to assess the impact of interventions on the participants' knowledge and attitude regarding selected ethical topics. A total of 335 students participated in this study and 86.57% of them filled the pretest and posttest forms. We observed significant improvements in the knowledge (P < 0.0500) and attitude (P < 0.0001) of participants. Interestingly, 89.8% of participants declared that their confidence regarding how to deal with the ethical problems outlined in the sessions was increased. All of the applied educational methods were reported as helpful. We found that SMER might be an effective method of teaching medical ethics. We highly recommend the investigation of the advantages of SMER in larger studies and interdisciplinary settings.
authors.affiliation: MD-MPH Student, Medical Ethics Association, Students' Scientific Research Center (SSRC), Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran;
authors.forename: Maani
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Beigy
authors.affiliation: MD-MPH Student, Medical Ethics Association, Students' Scientific Research Center (SSRC), Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran;
authors.forename: Ghasem
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pishgahi
authors.affiliation: MD-MPH Student, Medical Ethics Association, Students' Scientific Research Center (SSRC), Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran;
authors.forename: Fateme
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Moghaddas
authors.affiliation: MD-MPH Student, Medical Ethics Association, Students' Scientific Research Center (SSRC), Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran;
authors.forename: Nastaran
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Maghbouli
authors.affiliation: MD Student, Medical Ethics Association, Students' Scientific Research Center (SSRC), Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran;
authors.forename: Kamran
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Shirbache
authors.affiliation: Associate Professor, Medical Ethics and History of Medicine Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran;
authors.forename: Fariba
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Asghari
authors.affiliation: Resident of Ophthalmology, Eye Research Center, Rassoul Akram Hospital, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Navid
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Abolfat-H Zadeh
keywords: Large group discussion; Medical education; Medical ethics; Role playing; Teaching rounds