CME AETCOM MODULE 2 MEDICAL ETHICS

ATTITUDES, ETHICS AND HEALTH COMMUNICATION INTRODUCTION Medical and allied professionals include physicians and other health workforce (professional nurses, midwives, pharmacists, laboratory scientists/technicians etc) engage in actions whose primary intent is to enhance health. In healthcare work, attitudes, ethics and communication are important. The three entities govern an individual’s everyday encounter in health service delivery. To many people, the work of medical (and allied profession) is nothing but caring, compassionate and humanitarian service. Therefore, medical and allied professionals are expected to act in a respectful, courteous and civil manner towards their patients, colleagues and others involved in the provision of health care. Unfortunately, medical ethics, behavioral science, communication skills, and managerial skills do not receive due attention in the existing medical curriculum as they should. The curriculums do not appropriately support the medical and allied graduates to handle the stressors, which often lead to professional dissatisfaction with undesirable negative attitudes and consequences. Therefore, building attitudinal, ethical and communication (AETCOM) competencies in medical and allied health professionals is a core strategy that can be adopted to improve quality of care and responsiveness, and overall patients’ satisfaction in the health system. LEARNING OBJECTIVES At the end of the course, participants will: • Understand the definition, components and functions of attitude in healthcare, why attitudes of medical and allied professionals can undermine good medical practice, and describe the positive and negative attitudes in healthcare. • Understand the definition and key issues relating to medical ethics and discuss the principles of medical ethics as well as the ethical codes, and the duties and responsibilities of medical professionals, and understand professional misconduct and malpractice, and existing disciplinary mechanisms. • Understand key issues and justification for effective health communication, describe models of communication between patients and health professionals COURSE MODULES • Module 1: Attitudes of Medical and Allied Professionals • Module 2: Medical Ethics • Module 3: Health Communication

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