Implementing the pathology attitude, communication, and ethics module teaching in competency based medical education:...

Newly introduced topic AETCOM (attitude, communication, and ethics) includes modules 2.4 (working in a health care team [HCT]) and 2.8 (What does it mean to be a family member of a sick patient?) (Empathy) in Competency based medical education (CBME) pathology curriculum through a combination of activities. The actual implementation has been tedious with a few modifications felt to be necessary to accomplish it.

1) To increase students' interest, participation and understanding of importance of pathology AETCOM topics. 2) Assessing the effectiveness and students' feedback of the teaching methodology used.

In II MBBS pathology students (CBME Batch) while implementing pathology AETCOM module.

Planning, sensitization for the new topic, and various activities for carrying out AETCOM session along with reflective writing (RW) and skits by students and students' feedback of the whole session was conducted. Consent was obtained from students for analyzing the scores of RW and feedback for this study purpose. Formal assessment of RW and skits was conducted with the help of checklists having key features for empathy and working in an HCT. Feedback was assessed to find perception of students towards AETCOM sessions and effectiveness of various activities used in learning them.

Percentages.

Relevant RWs were 94.6% with mean scores of 7.71/10 for empathy and 7.75/10 for working in HCT. Feedback reflected an overall positive experience of AETCOM Pathology teaching. The most useful activity found was skit and combined effect of all the activities was the most helpful in the maximum retention of topics of AETCOM Pathology in final pathology theory paper.

Various activities with RW with discussion and skits increased students' performance and interest in learning AETCOM pathology.