Paper short abstract:

This proposal aims to bring critical pedagogy to medical education. We seek to implement an experimental ethnographic method recording experiences in a multimodal database in Cuenca-Ecuador's medical school. How would these reflections contribute to the transformation of medical education?

Paper long abstract:

The way biomedicine values objectivity as a core competency is challenged by social scientists but also by some biomedical doctors themselves. What happens when physicians, trained in a biomedical practice that values objectivity as a core competency, are offered additional tools for personal and social reflection?

Nowhere is the acknowledgement of this more pressing than in Ecuador, where adopting biotechnologies as the only best standard for healthcare is eminent and on track. As a response to this trend, I am collaborating with a group of medical school professors at the University of Cuenca in Ecuador on this research proposal that aims to bring ethnographic methodologies into the Internal Medicine Residency curricula.

My goal in this project is to work with medical students and together pay attention to the interactions, reactions and emotions that arise during their clinical training and ethnographically record them in a shared platform. Written fieldnotes should not be the only data input; other modalities like voice memos, videos, sketches, and or mobile-phone- photographs as fieldnotes would allow the integration of perceptions through other senses into the work. Students will store their modes of data as they see fit in a multimodal digital platform, which will serve as the base for collective analysis; because medical training is hardly an individual endeavor, on the contrary it is heavily collaborative.

The ethnographic and collaborative aspect of this project could contribute in building better ways to teach and learn health sciences for the benefit of patients and healthcare workers alike.