The Case for Brutalist Honesty in Medical Education

The assumption of a prioi trust between students and institutions of medical education is anachronistic and promotes both unnecessary student anxiety and the adoption of hidden curriculums to offset perceived risk due to a lack of transparency. Compared to the past, students now have access to a wealth of outside data to evaluate their curricular progress and career prospects against, and yet institutions are lagging behind in openly disclosing information related to metrics of student success (course passing rates, number of repeat students per class, Step 1 pass rate, etc.) that would engender trust and afford students greater agency in their academic decisions.

In developing a new academic counseling office, the author deployed a method of using brutalist honesty as a means of student support, both in terms of answering all curriculum questions truthfully no matter the topic and with individualized data analytics to provide objective evidence as to student performance progress. The overarching goal was to foster student trust and have a positive relationship, both of which are necessary to give meaningful recommendations.

As a result, the 2023 graduating medical school class, the first class to go through a full 4 years of this approach, rated the academic counseling office with a 96.2% satisfaction rate. This is above the national average of 88.1%, and the class performed 9 points higher than the institution's three-year historical average on Step 1.

Our goal is to maintain this approach to see if student satisfaction continues to remain high, or if given time, brutalist honesty becomes an assumed trait of the program. Additionally, we aim to push for high-quality research into student perceptions of trust and the impact that has on their academic outcomes.