Professional attitudes of doctors and medical teaching

Abstract

The attitude of doctors towards the profession influences to a large extent a number of aspects of clinical competence. Their attitude towards the patient is particularly important as it determines the quality of communication. There is reason to believe that a certain number of practising clinicians have not acquired the appropriate attitude to their patients and the skills in communicating that this entails in spite of specific undergraduate education programmes. This would warrant more and different attention to this subject by medical schools than is actually the case. The recently introduced scale of attitudes between doctor-centred, disease-oriented and patient-centred, problem-oriented could provide a basis for studying, teaching and evaluating individual attitudes of students.

Cure-oriented versus care-oriented attitudes in medicine

“…Subjects were classi®ed on a continuum ranging from doctor-to patient-centred and from cure-to careoriented. Due to the evolution towards a biopsychosocial perspective in medicine [5] the`ideal physician' was more and more modelled as someone who is patient-centred and care-oriented [11,12]. In this study, we questioned the relevance of a unidimensional concept of cure and care attitudes by means of an empirical analysis among 88 Belgian medical students.…”

“…The goal of this article is to further clarify the concept of a care-oriented attitude and to determine how it is related to a cure-oriented attitude. In the past, several authors have described a wide range of attitudes that are thought to be relevant for the patientcentred approach [11,12]. In this line of research, the role of attitudes as determinants of the quality of the consultation behaviour is considered.…”

A Needs Assessment for a Communication Skills Curriculum in Iran

“…This approach also is common in many divisions of hospitals in Western countries. 19 In Iran, this approach may be attributed to the fact that doctors have never been trained to consult in general practice settings. As such, their skills are limited to making value judgments, often using the only available criterion, which is a comparison with their own style.…”

A gender-specific evaluation of a care-oriented curricular change in a Dutch medical school

“…In this relationship, care management occupies a more central position than does disease management, with emphasis on patients learning to cope with their disease and self-manage their lives (Lorig & Holman 2003). Medical education should anticipate this change in the patient population which the next generation of doctors will serve by paying more attention to fostering care-oriented attitudes in students (De Monchy 1990, 1992Ribeiro et al 2007). We examined the effects of a programme for third-year students aimed at promoting a patient-oriented attitude towards chronically ill patients by exposing students to one patient with a chronic disease during a whole year and focusing their attention on aspects of chronic disease through assignments, debriefing sessions and assessment.…”

“…The challenge to medical education is to prepare students adequately for this demographic shift in the patient population and its impact on medical practice. Thus, a key question to be answered by educators is whether and how they can modify the curriculum to equip students with the skills and attitudes to provide the best possible care for chronically ill patients (De Monchy 1990, 1992Ribeiro et al 2007). Curriculum interventions designed with this objective in mind have to be tested and evaluated to determine their effectiveness.…”