Interdisciplinary Seminar Series

Critical Incidents

Offered:

• September 14^th, 2005 at 1:00pm

General Objectives

1. Provide students in clinical clerkships with a forum for guided discussion of what it means to be a medical professional by means of discussing experiences they have found to be critical and/or problematic to their sense of themselves as doctors.
2. Provide students with a means-individual journal writing-whereby they may reflect on their experiences on becoming doctors.
3. Encourage collaborative consideration of some ethical and moral dimensions of being a clinical clerk through discussion of individual examples of 'critical incidents.' A 'critical incident' may be any experience of illness, patient behavior or interaction, or staff or resident behavior that a student finds meaningful in terms of its ethical, moral, or professional dimensions. Students are encouraged to reflect on aspects of their professional lives they may find problematic.
4. Provide guided discussion of the intersection between the 'official culture' of health care institutions and the day-to-day 'hallway culture' in which medical work gets done.

Students
Minimum Number: 4
Maximum Number: 6

Agenda
As the seminar is based on discussion of student experiences, each student is expected to come to the seminar with a written account of the incident(s) they have found to be critical according to the criteria listed above. Students should be prepared to either read these aloud, circulate copies to the group for reading followed by discussion, or permit the instructor to read aloud their entry.
Total time of seminar = 180 minutes

• Lecture = 20 minutes background on clinical ethics from a student perspective.
• Writing (in advance)-45 minutes minimum
• Working in small group = 120 minutes
• Total group discussion = 120 minutes
• Break = 10 minutes
• Time allotted as needed = 30 minutes

Teaching Format
Prior to the seminar: 45 minutes (minimum): students individually will have compiled a journal note that discusses one or more incidents they have experienced in their clerkships that they find 'critical' in terms of its impact on their views of ethics and/or professional behavior. Incidents may involve their experiences of patients, providers, diseases, or staff members.

20 minutes: lecture on critical incidents from a student perspective including background on medical ethics from a student perspective (work done at University of Pennsylvania, including a medical student ethics journal) and professionalism, including comments on the operations of 'official' institutional culture concerning professionalism and 'ward' cultures of professionalism. Students will be asked to provide the seminar leader a copy of their work prior to the seminar so that he may comment on common themes.

120 minutes: each student will take 15 to 20 minutes to present her/his entry in an interactive format. The seminar leader will guide the discussion so as to promote active listening by all participants.

10 minutes: break

30 minutes: in an interactive way, the seminar leader and students will discuss issues brought out in the student writings, and the seminar leader will offer references for further reading on specific points as well as insights drawn from the ethical and social science literature on these points.