Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 24, 2025

Using Visual and Narrative Methods to Achieve Fair Process in Clinical Care
Published on: February 16, 2011
Teaching compassion for social accountability: A parallaxic investigation
Hoi F Cheu1, Pauline Sameshima2, Roger Strasser3,4
1Department of English, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Canada.
Background:
In an arts integrated interdisciplinary study set to investigate ways to improve social accountability (SA) in medical education, our research team has established a renewed understanding of compassion in the current SA movement.
Aim:
This paper explores the co-evolution of compassion and SA.
Methods:
The study used an arts integrated approach to investigate people's perceptions of SA in four medical schools across Australia, Canada, and the USA. Each school engaged approximately 25 participants who partook in workshops and in-depth interviews.
Results:
We began with a study of SA and the topic of compassion emerged out of our qualitative data and biweekly meetings within the research team. Content analysis of the data and pedagogical discussion brought us to realize the importance of compassion in the practice of SA.
Conclusions:
The cultivation of compassion needs to play a significant role in a socially accountable medical educational system. Medical schools as educational institutions may operate themselves with compassion as a driving force in engaging partnership with students and communities. Social accountability without compassion is not SA; compassion humanizes institutional policy by engaging sympathy and care.
Related Concept Videos
Empathy
The Sense of Self: Reflected Self-Appraisal and Social Comparison
The Scientific Method
Ethical Dilemmas II
Ethics in Research
Horney's Sociocultural Approach

