AMSE Newsletter – 2023 – No. 1

Dear friends and colleagues, dear members of AMSE,

Today we report on a very interesting initiative from our AMSE member, School of Medicine of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki:

Advancing patient-centricity in medical education. Auditing practices and fostering improvement.

Medical students were invited to complete a survey examining their understanding and knowledge about different aspects of patient-centricity and their education regarding patient-centered healthcare.

Their conceptual approach to patient-centricity was good. The students reported that their medical education familiarized them a lot with the concept that fostering patient-centricity is a substantial goal of health systems but promoting practices which advance patient-centricity was a weak learning objective.

The students:

• rated their knowledge/views/exposure to learning experiences regarding: shared decision-making, patients’ empowerment and health literacy, patients’ active involvement in research planning and new treatments/ medicines development (including clinical trials), patients’ active role in organizing-allocating health service, patients’ involvement in regulatory agencies for medicinal products, and in providing real world data.
• reported limited knowledge and limited exposure to learning experiences related to shared decision-making. They mostly admitted to have limited or no knowledge about the patients’ active involvement in research planning and development of new treatments.
• reported to have limited knowledge about the patients’ role in organizing the health service and the patients’ involvement in regulatory agencies for medicinal products.
• stated that the effects of digital technology and artificial intelligence were expected to enhance patient-centricity considerably.

Patient-centricity was found to be highly valued by medical students but there is limited knowledge and learning experiences regarding various areas of implementation.

The educators’ views about patient-centricity as a concept integrated to their teaching were investigated with a survey that revealed that although the educators considered patient-centricity central to their teaching about healthcare and they report engaging their students to practices which advance patient-centricity, mostly they focus on shared decision making and very limited learning experiences familiarize the students with other aspects of patient -centricity such as patients’ active involvement in research planning and new treatments development, patients’ role in organizing-allocating health service, patients’  involvement in regulatory agencies, and in providing real world data.

Several aspects of patient-centricity are not widely addressed and since fostering relevant knowledge and learning experiences is an objective of medical education, the students and educators’ views are to guide action to improve patient-centricity in medical education.

Our findings are to be shared with Medical Schools pursuing a firm approach to advancing patient-centricity in medical education, research and healthcare which could collaborate to this initiative.

To join this initiative, please contact:

Athanasia Printza, MD, MSc, Associate Professor of Otolaryngology-Phoniatrics, School of Medicine,
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, email: aprintza@auth.gr

From Berlin, 
Harm Peters

Prof. Harm Peters, MD, MHPE
AMSE President
Mühlenstrasse 8a
D-14167 Berlin, Germany
Email: president@amse-med.eu