Advocating active and meaningful involvement of patients in the delivery of medical education

Abstract

The onus of knowledge acquisition and learning has demonstrated a paradigm shift in the field of medical education. The present review has been carried out to explore and understand the role of patient involvement in the training of medical students. An extensive search of all materials related to the topic was carried out in the PubMed search engine, and a total of 26 articles were selected based on the suitability with the current review objectives. The involvement of patients in medical education has been linked with a wide range of proven benefits and learning progression. The patients can discharge multiple roles, namely a teacher, developing curriculum, assessor, and someone who can select students for the course. The role of actively involving patients in the teaching process is bound to have some challenges and barriers considering the different aspects in heterogeneous settings. The ideal approach to involve patients in medical education has to start with sensitizing the faculty members and the medical students about the benefits that can be derived out of such clinical interactions. The successful implementation will essentially require adequate resource support and faculty involvement. To conclude, the patient involvement in medical training is not a new practice, but the ground reality is that we are falling short to optimize the benefits of the overall practice. The need of the hour is to adopt a systematic approach and structure the overall program, so that we can derive tangible benefits out of the same and prepare the future generation of doctors in the delivery of patient-centered care.