Advocacy in action: Medical student reflections of an experiential curriculum

Abstract

Patient advocacy and health equity are fundamental values that are linked in medical education. The definition of patient advocacy is the action by a physician, through professional work and expertise, to promote those social, economic, educational and political changes that ameliorate the suffering and threats to human health and well-being. 1 Health equity is the absence of avoidable, unfair or remediable differences among groups of people, whether those groups are defined socially, economically, demographically or geographically or by other means of stratification. 2 Physicians must be equipped to address social factors that affect health and recognize their roles as patient advocates to improve care and promote health equity. 3 Social determinants of health (SDH)-the environmental conditions in which people 'are born, grow, live, work and age'-account

Integrating the Social Determinants of Health into Graduate Medical Education training: a Scoping Review

“…As explained in table 3, the duration of the program relating to SDH varied. A total of twelve programs had longitudinal modules, which spanned between one to three years of the postgraduate medical residency [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33], while ve other programs spanned between two to nine months of postgraduate medical residency [34][35][36][37][38]. Seven programs took between two weeks and six weeks [39-43, 43, 44], while the shortest program involved three online simulations, each simulation is 4 hours (one-half day) and completed during a module on advocacy .…”

“…[45] Table 3 to be inserted here The structure of the programs related to SDH varied across a range of thematic areas. A total of ve courses had a focus on home visits and different community healthcare interventions [23,30,31,40,41], while another set of ten programs were in the form of case-based workshops on a variety of topics such as prison healthcare, housing issues locating pharmacies and follow-up of patients after discharge [24-26, 28, 29, 32, 34, 39, 43, 45] Lastly, nine programs focused on health advocacy topics, such as opportunities to integrate SDH at community health clinics, housing, education and legal issues, integration of health disparities to clinical practices and equity, diversity, and inclusion [22,27,[33][34][35][36][37][38]44].…”

“…Eight programs used pre-and post-learning evaluation surveys [24,25,29,30,32,35,38,43], while eleven programs used only post-learning evaluation surveys [22, 27, 28, 31, 36, 37, 39-41, 44, 45]. Two programs used thematic analysis of participants' written re ections and interviews [26,34]. One program used both survey and re ection through the course of the program.…”

What comes after strategy: Moving beyond statements and open letters – An analysis of three Toronto hospitals’ diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) plans

“…[The patient] experienced sexual violence in her SRO and genuinely fears the drug-related activity that occurs in her hallways. 19 (p. 4)…”

“…While these services are not available at every hospital, I know have knowledge about community resources available for my future patients and can contact them on my own.' 19 (p. 4)…”