Understandings and practices: Towards socially responsive curricula for the health professions

Global health inequities have created an urgency for health professions education to transition towards responsive and contextually relevant curricula. Such transformation and renewal processes hold significant implications for those educators responsible for implementing the curriculum. Currently little is known about how health professions educators across disciplines understand a responsive curriculum and how this understanding might influence their practice. We looked at curricula that aim to deliver future health care professionals who are not only clinically competent but also critically conscious of the contexts in which they serve and the health care systems within which they practice. We conducted a qualitative study across six institutions in South Africa, using focus group discussions and in-depth individual interviews to explore (i) how do health professions educators understand the principles that underpin their health professions education curriculum; and (ii) how do these understandings of health professions educators shape their teaching practices? The transcripts were analysed thematically following multiple iterations of critical engagement to identify patterns of meaning across the entire dataset. The results reflected a range of understandings related to knowing, doing, and being and becoming; and a range of teaching practices that are explicit, intentionally designed, take learning to the community, embrace a holistic approach, encourage safe dialogic encounters, and foster reflective practice through a complex manner of interacting. This study contributes to the literature on health professions education as a force for social justice. It highlights the implications of transformative curriculum renewal and offers insights on how health professions educators embrace notions of social responsiveness and health equity to engage with these underlying principles within their teaching.