Fourth year medical students’ reflective writing on “death of Ivan Ilych: a qualitative study
Journal Title: Journal of Advances in Medical Education and Professionalism - Year 2017, Vol 5, Issue 2
Abstract
Introduction: Medical students should be familiar with the end of life ethical issues and its considerations. For teaching end of life care to medical students, literature is a source of excellent narratives of patients with experiences of terminally ill condition in their journey through suffering and one of the most favourite bioethics literature readings has been the death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy. We used this novel to show medical students end of life events and suffering and asked them to write a reflective essay on it. We aimed to find what students think about terminally ill patients and their journey to death. Methods: In an inductive qualitative content analysis model, 350 essays, collected by homogenous sampling, were analyzed. The fourth year medical students were provided with the Death of Ivan Ilych novel to read. They were asked to write a reflection essay based on the reflective stages defined by Sandars. These essays served as the unit of analysis, each being read several times and a coding model was formed according to main topics. The related concepts in each unit were named as themes and each theme was abstracted to a code and the related codes were compared and developed as categories. Results: Qualitative content analysis of 350 essays of fourth year medical students revealed three major categories in students’ reflection on reading Death of Ivan Ilych as an end of life human body. These included: 1) Emotional experience, 2) Empathy and effective communication, 3) Spirituality and dignity. Analysis of essays showed that this reflection activity may help medical students have a deeper idea of the end of life situation and feelings. Conclusion: This project suggests that literature can be used as an example to introduce new ethical concepts to less experienced medical trainees. The students acquired the concept of the story and reflected the major aspects of the suffering of a human being in their essays. Having used and evaluated the effect of literature on facilitating ethical insight in the teaching end of life care, we strongly recommend this method and specially the novella, Death of Ivan Ilych.
Authors and Affiliations
MAHSHID ZOHOURI, MITRA AMINI, MOHAMMAD MEHDI SAGHEB
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP235763
- DOI -
- Views 103
- Downloads 0
The effect of question generation activity on students’ learning and perception
Introduction: Student-generated questions can be a very helpful tool in medical education. The use of this activity can allow the students to feel more involved in the subjects covered and may improve their knowledge and...
Assessing clinical reasoning skills using Script Concordance Test (SCT) and extended matching questions (EMQs): A pilot for urology trainees
Introduction: Clinical reasoning skill is the core of medical competence. Commonly used assessment methods for medical competence have limited ability to evaluate critical thinking and reasoning skills. Script Concordanc...
Develop talents to increase productivity: report of the ninth national medical science olympiad in Islamic Republic of Iran in year 2017
Extracurricular activities for the gifted and talented students in Iran derive from the belief that students with high potentials are expected to make great help for the health care of the community. One of these activit...
Dynamics of self-directed learning in M.Sc. nursing students: A qualitative research
Introduction: Working in the complex and ever changing healthcare settings forces the nurses and nursing students to be equipped with lifelong learning skills. One of the lifelong learning skills is self-directed learnin...
Reflection for the undergraduate on writing in the portfolio: where are we now and where are we going?
Introduction: The portfolio can be seen as a tool for assessment of a variety of learning activities that differ in content, usage, and assessment. The portfolio not only meets the learner’s educational needs but also th...