Krysiewicz-Bell Aubrienne
Incoming first year medical student at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York, United States.
Health Hum Rights. 2025 Jun;27(1):73-82.
In today's world of stark inequalities, medical education is increasingly recognizing the importance of exposing future physicians to topics such as health equity, social justice, public health, and human rights. A human rights-based approach (HRBA) to medical education centers these concepts as the foundation of equitable and accessible health care systems, comprising professionals who are literate in the social determinants of health and work to combat underlying inequalities. While medical schools and residency programs have preliminarily embraced this approach, the premedical curriculum has remained effectively stagnant since the early 20th century, adopting a narrow focus on the basic sciences and competitive individualism. In this essay, I argue that the premedical years represent a crucial, yet thus far overlooked, time frame in which to cultivate the values, qualities, and career expectations required of physicians under an HRBA to medical education, and critique how the current system generally fails to accomplish this. As a potential solution to realign the premedical curriculum with an HRBA and promote greater synergy within the medical education pipeline, I promote the introduction of premedical service-learning courses, which combine formal instruction in social justice, public health, and human rights with student-led community service projects.
在当今存在严重不平等的世界中，医学教育越来越认识到让未来的医生接触健康公平、社会正义、公共卫生和人权等主题的重要性。基于人权的医学教育方法（HRBA）将这些概念作为公平且可及的医疗保健系统的基础，该系统由了解健康的社会决定因素并努力消除潜在不平等现象的专业人员组成。虽然医学院校和住院医师培训项目已初步采用这种方法，但自20世纪初以来，医学预科课程实际上一直停滞不前，主要专注于基础科学和竞争性个人主义。在本文中，我认为医学预科阶段是培养基于人权的医学教育方法要求医生具备的价值观、品质和职业期望的关键时期，但迄今为止却被忽视了，同时我还批评了当前体系通常未能做到这一点的情况。作为使医学预科课程与基于人权的方法重新保持一致并促进医学教育体系内更大协同效应的潜在解决方案，我提倡引入医学预科服务学习课程，该课程将社会正义、公共卫生和人权方面的正规教学与学生主导的社区服务项目相结合。
