Using a virtue ethics lens to develop a socially accountable community placement programme for medical students

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Ethics in Medicine
• Community Health

Background:

• Community-based education (CBE) integrates cognitive, affective, and practical learning to refine value systems.
• This study examines virtue ethics (VE) to understand principles underpinning socially accountable community placement programs for medical students.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify the internal goods essential for successful medical CBE.
• To determine the virtues crucial for promoting and sustaining socially accountable community placement programs.

Main Methods:

• A secondary, theoretically informed thematic analysis of primary data was performed.
• MacIntyre's virtue ethics theory served as the conceptual framework for the analysis.

Main Results:

• Virtue ethics highlights how character and virtues shape moral behavior in practices like CBE.
• Internal goods (e.g., collaborative attitude) strengthen practices and augment individual and community virtues (e.g., empathy).
• Key internal goods for socially accountable CBE include a service-oriented mindset, community needs understanding, transformed thinking, and collaboration.
• Essential virtues for sustaining these goods are empathy, compassion, connectedness, accountability, engagement, cooperation, perseverance, and a willingness to be an agent of change.

Conclusions:

• MacIntyre's virtue ethics theory offers a valuable framework for understanding the principles that establish, maintain, and sustain CBE.
• The identified virtues and internal goods are critical for developing and sustaining effective, socially accountable community placement programs in medical education.