Effect of Education in AETCOM Competencies in Shaping the Professional Attitudes of Medical Students

Abstract

Introduction: The Attitude, Ethics and Communication (AETCOM) module has been introduced in the recent Competency Based Medical Education (CBME) curriculum in the year 2019 as a means of directly and explicitly imparting soft skills to students. As this program has been implemented phase-wise in our institution, we conducted a preliminary survey to identify professional attitudes of students in the 2019-20 batch who have had some exposure to AETCOM education as compared to the earlier 2017-18 batch who had no exposure to the modules.Methods: This was an observational cross-sectional study involving two groups of undergraduate medical students who were exposed and not exposed to AETCOM modules respectively. A self-administered semi-structured questionnaire comprising 20 closed-ended and 4 open-ended items related to the study topic was designed for data collection. Responses were entered and tabulated in MS Excel and analyzed using SPSS version 21 by descriptive and inferential statistics.Results: A total of 103 medical students participated. The Mean Attitude Score (MAS) was significantly higher in the batch exposed to the AETCOM sessions. Among those exposed, 91.65% agreed that their behaviour towards patients had changed after attending the sessions. In addition, they gave suggestions on how the delivery of the modules could be improved in the second professional year.Conclusion: Formal training in AETCOM competencies has a positive effect in shaping the professional attitudes of medical students. Role plays and clinical exposure are perceived as effective ways of imparting ethics education. This positive effect can be enhanced with improved teaching-learning methods for successive batches of undergraduate medical trainees at our institution.