(Med 3) Sharing notes from med school on professionalism, ethics, legal, and preventive & public health - may be useful for interviews or casper

[we_the_norf]

Not sure which subforum to post this to so I chose general... I just started clerkship and I have all my preclerkship notes on ethics, legal, professionalism, and preventive & public health medicine. If anyone wants summaries and some worksheets from the lectures & tutorials, send me a DM. I can't share some of the articles directly because of copyright but I'll send my notes on topics that may come up for med school interviews. References for each topic will be included and you can access it via your school's library proxy for free hopefully.

I'm making some quick worksheets for the material that I think would be helpful for med interviews so it's not too lengthy. I should have a few made every other week. Off the top of my head, here are some topics (please let me know if there's anything specific you feel you want to strengthen so I can focus on what's most important to you):

• CanMEDs framework and how it fits into medical school (completed)
• Social determinants of health
• Social development programs and policy in Canada
• Indigenous reconciliation strategies (in progress)
• Special programs for Indigenous health (e.g. Jordan's principle)
• Mandatory reporting
• Medical history events (e.g. HIV and blood transfusions, MAID)
• Ethical clinical scenarios (e.g. breaking patient confidentiality, blood transfusions and religious groups)
• If there's much interest, I'll put aside a half day to sort through my notes and make some quiz questions too.

I'm aiming the worksheets to be at the undergraduate level and at the med 1 level. If it's too easy, let me know and I can make the confirmation questions more difficult (e.g. fill in the blanks for key words, definitions, etc.) Keep studying and working hard. It will pay off when you're in med school.

[GH0ST]

Hello,

First off I appreciate your interest in this type of topic. I would caution however, that much of this is written in various resources.

Please also keep in mind that "hot topics" change regularly and the future students may need additional resources. 

I would recommend the following:

General Introduction to Public Health: see the AFMC Primer on Public Health... I don't particularly agree with everything that is written as you can tell it is clinical physicians with limited exposure to larger scale population health. Most of the content focus is on epidemiological principles such as screening. It does contain some info on infectious disease and accessing health care. https://phprimer.afmc.ca/en/ 

Canadian Health Care System - federal and provincial roles, service delivery, etc https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-care-system/reports-publications/health-care-system/canada.html

Social Determinants of Health see... 1) WHO https://www.who.int/health-topics/social-determinants-of-health#tab=tab_1 (pay attention also to "COVID-19 and the social determinants of health and health equity: evidence brief" 2) Government of Canada https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/health-promotion/population-health/what-determines-health.html, 3) Canadian Public Health Association https://www.cpha.ca/what-are-social-determinants-health

* I also recommend reading provincial health authority information as well as information from your local public health unit. Another topic to learn is health equity - in particular, understanding access and constraints. 

Indigenous Health - summary of the Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) report https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf, I also recommend reading the Canada Call to Action Report on TRC https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf 

This resource summarizes example support programming for Indigenous populations https://www.canada.ca/en/services/indigenous-peoples/health-services-and-social-programs-indigenous-peoples.html 

Mandatory Reporting ... this is tricky as it's primarily a local and provincial task with federal involvement focused on surveillance, usually you should look at diseases of public health significance to understand what you must report re: infectious disease. Also compare and contrast what is considered virulent vs transmissible. I would also consider understanding the adverse events following vaccination reporting process and process of approving vaccinations as I suspect that's a hot debate topic. 

Each province has a Health Promotion and Protection Act (HPPA) that lists reporting principles... for example, this is for Ontario https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90h07

Most are not relevant to general physicians as it is more tailored towards medical officers of health (MOH) and public health physicians to enact their health priorities. 

Med History my recommendations include - developing Canadian health system, SARS, walkerton, TRC commission +/- residential schools, COVID-19, monkeypox, HIV, STIs in general, health equity focusing on LGBTQ, opioid crisis and the dichotomy between prescription excess vs unsafe supply vs criminality, marijuana legalization, tobacco and alcohol policies

Ethics - can start with Doing Right but there are plenty on ethical principles in textbooks and online... my only addition is that population level ethics is different than individual level ethics and often clash ex. individual autonomy vs vaccine mandate

Other - hot topics include, but aren't limited to (including above): long term care homes, surveillance programming vs privacy of information, universal basic income +/- paid sick days and worker advocacy, data sharing and coordination with EMRs and surveillance data, mental health, schooling, global health inequity associated with thid world countries ex. who gets vaccines first? 

Good luck, 

- G 

[we_the_norf]

This is awesome! I'll go over some of the references and add to the worksheets I've created. I find having quiz questions during learning can help to confirm understanding. That's why I've distilled some of the dense resources you've linked into high yield summaries with multiple choice questions.