Program on Professionalism Curriculum
"It is easier to write a prescription than to
come to an understanding with a patient."
-Kafka
The Program on Professionalism is a new initiative to enhance training in professional qualities throughout the OHSU Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Dentistry curriculum.
To the patient, serious or prolonged illness is frightening, confusing, and intensely isolating. An effective physician, nurse or dentist must be both technically skilled and acutely attended to the patient as a person. For while the technical aspects of health care are critical, they are far more helpful in the context of a respectful and caring relationship, where the health care professional understands the human experience that surrounds illness as well as the illness itself.
These humanistic elements of medicine are broadly known as professionalism - a set of essential skills that are partly innate, but mostly learned. OHSU has developed the John A. Benson, Jr., Program on Professionalism in response to the increasing challenges of teaching such skills in the busy and complex environment of health care today. The program's goal is to integrate professionalism into every aspect of the medical, nursing and dental school curriculum, preparing each graduate to:
Listen, explain, and show caring
The results will be far reaching. Students (most of whom will choose to practice in Oregon) will have tools they need to be markedly more effective as health care professionals.
Disclosure of Medical Errors
One educational program within the Program on Professionalism focuses on communication skills in the disclosure of medical errors. One of the most powerful steps we can take to improve patient safety is to encourage disclosure of near misses and medical errors to healthcare systems. We also have an ethical professional obligation to disclose them to patients and families. These are difficult conversations for both patients and health care professionals, and each of us can benefit from discussing how best to disclose medical errors.
The Program on Professionalism is offering interactive learning sessions to the interdisciplinary OHSU community on error disclosure and related communication skills. The goal of the sessions is to highlight the central role of disclosure in improving patient safety and promoting trust. We work with faculty in all disciplines, departments, and divisions to write credible and challenging case scenarios. We then facilitate small group interactive seminar sessions where health care professionals at all levels of training can observe, and participate in, a simulated error disclosure discussion. These sessions are well received and we look forward to continuing to serve the OHSU community.