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CURRICULUM, INSTRUCTION, AND PEDAGOGY article

Front. Med.
Sec. Healthcare Professions Education
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2024.1484058
This article is part of the Research Topic Nurturing Medical Professionalism in Different Cultural Contexts View all 3 articles

"Busting the Hidden Curriculum" a Realist and Innovative Perspective to Foster Professional Behaviors

Provisionally accepted
Shaista S Guraya Shaista S Guraya 1*Grainne Kearney Grainne Kearney 2Frank Doyle Frank Doyle 3Asil Sadeq Asil Sadeq 3Abdelsalam Bensaaud Abdelsalam Bensaaud 3Eric Clarke Eric Clarke 3Mark Harbinson Mark Harbinson 2Aine Ryan Aine Ryan 3Mary Smyth Mary Smyth 3Sinead Hand Sinead Hand 3Fiona Boland Fiona Boland 3Salman Yousuf Guraya Salman Yousuf Guraya 4Denis Harkin Denis Harkin 3
  • 1 Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
  • 2 Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
  • 3 Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland
  • 4 College of Medicine, University of Sharjah, Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Contemporary health professions education has long delineated the desired attributes of medical professionalism in the form of standard curricula and their role in forming professional behaviors (PBs) among aspiring doctors. However, existing research has shown the contradictory and powerful role of hidden curriculum (HC) in negatively influencing medical students' PBs through unspoken or implicit academic, cultural, or social standards and practices. These contrasting messages of formal curricula and HC lead to discordance and incongruence in future healthcare professionals developing professional identity formation. There is little research on PB modifying educational strategies and their determinants that medical schools adopt to bust the impact of HC. Consequently, it is unclear how the right PBs can be influenced, entrenched, and inculcated in undergraduate medical students, especially in their early clinical placements. The lack of such insight highlights a critical gap in the literature, nudging educators to take a realist stance to deal with this problem. Behavior psychology stresses shaping medical students' values and beliefs as salient mediators that influence intentions to pursue future PBs. Curiosity prevails about what would guide the educational interventions to target this behavior change. To help understand this concept, we present our design-based innovative perspective about PROfessionalism in Partnership for Education Research (PROPER) shaped by pluralistic theoretical models in the context of two European medical schools with diverse medical students, highlighting its non-parochial and transferable nature.

    Keywords: hidden curriculum, Professional behaviors, medical professionalism, Design-based research (DBR), Theory of planned behavi, Mixed-methods study

    Received: 21 Aug 2024; Accepted: 13 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Guraya, Kearney, Doyle, Sadeq, Bensaaud, Clarke, Harbinson, Ryan, Smyth, Hand, Boland, Guraya and Harkin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Shaista S Guraya, Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

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