The Need for Social Accountability in Medical School Education: a Tale of Five Students’ Integration into Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside
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Abstract
Abstract
Medical educators are recognizing that social accountability is a tenet of Canadian medical education, yet it is a difficult concept to teach didactically. Accumulating evidence supports the integration of social accountability into the medical curriculum through community involvement. Fortunately, the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine enables students to pursue community learning as part of its curriculum; and we, five medical students, benefited from that opportunity. This commentary will promote the importance of teaching social accountability in medical schools through community-based learning based on available literature and our personal experience with Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES).
Résumé
Les professeurs de médecine reconnaissent que la responsabilité sociale est un pilier de l’éducation médicale canadienne; néan- moins, c’est un concept difficile à enseigner didactiquement. De plus en plus de preuves appuient l’intégration de la responsabilité sociale au curriculum médical à travers l’engagement communautaire. Heureusement, la Faculté de Médecine de l’Université de la Colombie-Britannique permet aux étudiants de participer à l’apprentissage par engagement communautaire en tant que composante du curriculum; nous, cinq étudiants en médecine, avons pu profiter de cette opportunité. Ce commentaire va promouvoir l’importance d’enseigner la responsabilité sociale dans les écoles de médecine par l’intermédiaire de l’apprentissage par engagement communau- taire, basé sur la littérature disponible et notre expérience personnelle avec le quartier de Downtown Eastside de Vancouver (DTES).
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