LAUSR

1 | WHAT PROBLEMS WERE ADDRESSED? Some of the most profound changes medical students experience occur during the clerkship year. One concerning change is a significant decline in empathy. Medical students are exposed to a ‘hidden curriculum’ on the hospital wards, operating and emergency rooms and out-patient clinics that highlights the miraculous (e.g. lifesaving technologies), with little time to reflect on mistakes and issues that impede optimal health care and equitable health outcomes and how these experiences have shaped them. This contributes to cognitive dissonance, moral distress and burnout. Humanism and the social sciences are increasingly incorporated in the pre-clerkship phase of medical school, yet few schools have advanced curricula on these topics for senior medical students during their post-clerkship phase.