A comparison of attitudes of medical students in England and in South Africa towards patients with life-limiting illness.

All medical schools in the U.K. now include teaching in palliative care in the undergraduate curriculum, and this is mirrored in Europe and the U.S.A. In South Africa, however, palliative care education and provision are not widely available. An increasing number of medical and nursing staff are invited to teach palliative care in other countries. Such teaching should, however, take into account the cultural attitudes the students have towards the care of patients with a chronic or terminal illness. Nineteen statements on attitudes were constructed, and medical students in Leicester, U.K., and in Medunsa, South Africa, were invited to respond to them using a 10-point Likert scale. The questionnaire was distributed before either cohort of students had received any teaching in this area. Students in South Africa were significantly more likely to want to work in a speciality where most patients were likely to be cured (p < 0.001) and significantly less likely to believe that caring for dying patients could be rewarding (p < 0.001). South African medical students had significantly fewer positive attitudes than had their U.K. counterparts toward patients being informed of a terminal prognosis (p < 0.001). This study indicates that cultural differences between medical students may have an effect on the teaching of care for patients with life-limiting illness. This has relevance for curriculum delivery, especially when professionals are invited to teach or develop material on palliative care for other countries.

Consultation by the United Kingdom to South Africa to develop human diversity teaching.

This paper describes consultation provided by the University of Leicester to the Medical University of Southern Africa (Medunsa) funded through British Council and the Department for International Development to develop a course addressing issues of diversity at Medunsa. The aims of the link were essentially for Leicester to provide support and guidance on the development of aspecific module. This inevitably included the provision of training in key areas such as teaching skills and evaluation of teaching. This paper focuses on the potential difficulties of such a link, which included cultural differences, issues of hierarchy and student influence. The project outcomes have been the development of a coherent module on human diversity which is assessed in such a way as to support the development of student writing skills, increased staff teaching skills and a joint conference to disseminate the learning that has taken place from the project.