HOW DO MEDICAL STUDENTS RESPOND TO THE CONCEPT OF COMPASSION WITHOUT BEING CUED ON ITS IMPORTANCE? WHAT IS THE ROLE OF COMPASSION?

UPP 113

Objective. The objective of this study is to identify medical students awareness of “patients” as human beings and to see if they were conscious of the lack of information provided that would address the patient as “human being” including lack of statistics for various cultures, removal of information on complementary medicine as well as providing medical information that was without “heart.” Background. The role of compassion is usually not well addressed in medical education. The authors were keenly interested in finding out how medical students would respond to the omission of pertinent patient information that would create a holistic model of a “person” including mind, body and spiritual concerns. Several scenarios of breast cancer and the use of medical informatics were presented to the participants without referring to any of the progression of the disease as anything but stages without identifiable human beings. We were especially interested in knowing if medical students would notice this blatant lack of concern. Dr. Roseman is a specialist in Spirituality and Medicine and Compassionate Care. Dr. Rana is a specialist in Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education. Both Assistant Professors share an interest in the development of humanistic physicians. Methods. Two presentations were given to the participants. The first half of 41 the presentation by Dr. Rana was on the “Role of Informatics in Detecting Breast Cancer”. The second half of the presentation was on the topic of “The Compassionate Physician” by Dr. Roseman. After the informatics section of the presentation, the 40 second year medical students were asked to fill out a brief questionnaire with 9 questions. Participation in the questionnaire was anonymous. The questionnaire was later analyzed to find out students' perceptions of whether the informatics portion of the presentation ignored cultural and compassionate aspects of case studies. Results. Two presentations were given to the participants. The first half of the presentation by Dr. Rana was on the “Role of Informatics in Detecting Breast Cancer”. The second half of the presentation was on the topic of “The Compassionate Physician” by Dr. Roseman. After the informatics section of the presentation, the 40 second year medical students were asked to fill out a brief questionnaire with 9 questions. Participation in the questionnaire was anonymous. The questionnaire was later analyzed to find out students' perceptions of whether the informatics portion of the program ignored cultural and compassionate aspects of case studies. Conclusion. We believe that most medical students are so used to scientific presentations that it is a deeply instilled philosophy that is often supported by the medical educational culture to view their patients as “their disease”. Although, medical students indicate a keen awareness of the importance of “compassion” for patients, they were not able to identify the lack of “compassion”. Results of the questionnaire from the medical students indicated the lack of identifiable cultural statistics and the purposeful lack of discussion of any integrative/complementary medicine treatments. We find this to be problematic particularly because it is not unique to the prominent model of medicine. However, we were pleased to read the humanistic themes identified by most participants relating to the importance of compassion. Grants. N/A