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Ellaway RH, Van Roy K, Preston R, et al. Translating medical school social missions to student experiences. Med Educ. 2017;52(2):171-181doi: 10.1111/medu.13417.
Ellaway, R. H., Van Roy, K., Preston, R., Greenhill, J., Clithero, A., Elsanousi, S., Richards, J., Labarda, C., Graves, L., Mammen, M., Assayed, A. A., & Willems, S. (2018). Translating medical school social missions to student experiences. Medical education, 52(2), 171-181. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.13417
Ellaway, Rachel H, et al. "Translating medical school social missions to student experiences." Medical education vol. 52,2 (2018): 171-181. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.13417
Ellaway RH, Van Roy K, Preston R, Greenhill J, Clithero A, Elsanousi S, Richards J, Labarda C, Graves L, Mammen M, Assayed AA, Willems S. Translating medical school social missions to student experiences. Med Educ. 2018 Feb;52(2):171-181. doi: 10.1111/medu.13417. Epub 2017 Sep 26. PMID: 28949033.
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Med Educ. 2018 Feb;52(2):171-181. doi: 10.1111/medu.13417. Epub 2017 Sep 26.

Translating medical school social missions to student experiences.

Medical education

Rachel H Ellaway, Kaatje Van Roy, Robyn Preston, Jennene Greenhill, Amy Clithero, Salwa Elsanousi, Janet Richards, Charlie Labarda, Lisa Graves, Marykutty Mammen, Abbas A Assayed, Sara Willems

Affiliations

  1. Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
  2. Human Sciences, Northern Ontario School of Medicine, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
  3. Department of Family Medicine and Primary Health Care, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
  4. General Practice and Rural Medicine, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia.
  5. Flinders University Rural Clinical School, Renmark, South Australia, Australia.
  6. Family and Community Medicine, University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.
  7. Faculty of Medicine, University of Gezira, Gezira, Sudan.
  8. School of Health Sciences, University of the Philippines-Manila, Manila, Philippines.
  9. Department of Family and Community Medicine, Western Michigan University Homer Stryker MD School of Medicine, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA.
  10. Department of Human Biology, Walter Sisulu University, Mthatha, South Africa.

PMID: 28949033 DOI: 10.1111/medu.13417

Abstract

CONTEXT: There is a growing focus on the social missions of medical schools as a way of expressing an institutional commitment to service, responsibility and accountability. However, there has been little exploration of how a social mission translates to student experiences.

METHODS: This multicentre study explored how the social missions of eight medical schools (from Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Philippines, South Africa, Sudan and the USA) translated to their medical education programmes, and how their students perceived the mission. The study used a nested case study design involving interviews with final-year medical students. Constructivist grounded theory techniques were used to analyse the data. Cultural-historical activity theory concepts of externalisation and internalisation were used to structure the analyses.

RESULTS: The study identified substantial variation in the form, focus and depth of expression of each school's social mission, significant variation in how and to what extent the mission was externalised in the design of each school's undergraduate medical education programme, and significant variation in how students perceived the social mission and its translation to their training experiences. The translation of a social mission to educational outcomes depended on a cascade of externalisation and internalisation processes, each of which could alter or reinterpret the mission. Translation depended to a great extent on sensitising learners to the mission's values and issues and subsequently activating this knowledge in the context of direct clinical encounters that embodied the issues the mission was seeking to address.

CONCLUSION: Whether a medical school's social mission is focused on equity of access to the medical profession or on its graduates serving particular community needs, the mission principles need to be translated into practice. This translation process involves a series of externalisation and internalisation steps, each of which determines how much and what aspects of the mission are translated.

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and The Association for the Study of Medical Education.

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