• What is ATCOM?
• It refers to Attitude and Communication competencies
for Indian medical graduate.
• The overall goal of undergraduate medical education
programme (GMR 2012) is to create an “Indian
Medical Graduate” (IMG) possessing requisite
knowledge, skills, attitudes, values and responsiveness,
so that he or she may function appropriately and
effectively as a physician of first contact of the
community while being globally relevant.
• In order to achieve this goal, IMG has to
function appropriately and effectively in
her/his roles and acquire required
competencies and moral responsibilities.
• As per MCI, the domains of attitude,
communication and ethics needs to be taught
directly and explicitly throughout the
undergraduate curriculum
• s it really needed to teach attitude and
communication skills to medical students? -
Yes it is needed, let us think why?
• Present generation students:Today’s
generation students are technically advancing
but are poor in moral responsibilities.
• Students take selfie with cadavers and post as -
feeling awesome/great/excited on social media, a
postgraduate student posts on face book, a photo
of a surgery done/assisted by him with a title as ‘
My first surgery, very thrilling... and so on. In
another instance, a face book post of a resident
had a photo of neck swelling being examined at a
medial camp, with the face of the subject
completely displayed – there is no regard for
patient autonomy.
• Are these students to be blamed or not?
• We cannot blame the present generation,
because after all they are adolescents of age
17-18 years.
• Many of these students enter the medical
school with or without any background
knowledge of ethics, morality and human
values.
• A separate class was dedicated for moral science
during yester years, which is lacking now-can we
give a second thought here?
• Even moral story telling by parents and
grandparents is very scarce in today’s digital world.
Coming from this background, how can we expect
students entering medicine to have proper moral
behaviour on all aspects and particularly towards
cadavers and patients?
• But on the other hand, they are very smart,
they will run after teacher who is a true
facilitator and bunk classes where there is no
learning.
• Would teaching attitude & communication
(ATCOM) help us tackle these issues?? Perhaps
Yes. We can hope so.
• Present generation teachers:
• Book oriented teaching by the teachers.
• They are not interested to teach them any ethical
issues or discipline.
• They only teach knowledge.
• They take for granted that students are already
professionals and they know how to behave.
• All children (students) observe seniors and
teachers and the students follow them.
• If we as teachers are punctual and give
respect to cadaver, patients and communicate
properly, the students would also follow the
same.
• It is true that, WHAT YOU DO; SO YOUR
STUDENTS WOULD ALSO DO...
• Sadly, many a times we set bad examples for
students by not giving respect to patients or
cadavers.
• One cannot expect the students to realize their
mistakes if teachers themselves aren’t aware of
them.
• First, teachers should be given training regarding
this.
• MCI made it mandatory for all the medical faculty
to undergo MET workshop but sadly many of the
teachers feel it a WASTAGE OF TIME and the
attendance rate of such programs organised by
MEU, is VERY POOR (even PG program).
• We cannot deny our responsibility. Proper
counselling of students is very much essential
in every step of their life parallel to medical
teaching.
• Education and Morality/ Ethics are the two
wings of Medical sciences.
• How can we help the students to develop
good or positive attitude?
• We should work for students, stand by
students, mentor in day to day activities and
so its our job/effort to make them understand
things right or wrong their way/in a style
which is very well accepted by them.
• But in view of reduced faculty by MCI, many
faculty have the opinion that it’s difficult to
achieve the goal of effective reinforcement of
moral, ethical and professional behaviours to
impart for all the students (especially when
students are more and teachers are less).
• The decline will affect the morals and ethics
more than the academics
• Academics can survive by the explosion of
information available and the ease of accessing it
in today’s digital world; what will not be available
in the digital age will be of faculty who can really
live up to the role model status; what cannot be
learnt from such compromised and indifferent
faculty will be the Humanities and Ethics of being a
Doctor.
• Our role as teacher depends upon our
motivational capacity.
• In ancient times, Indian gurus kept their
followers completely engaged in controlled
thinking.
• Putting them under many challengin
circumstances and taught them how to tackle
them keeping in mind the morals of life.
• ATCOM is one such motivational tool for the
teachers to be a good mentor for their pupil.
• Our lectures should mix life and science
together with a flavour of humanity, rather
than mandatory cause-effect and clinico-
pathological discourse.
• Let us try slowly to transform ourselves before
setting our students in motion.
• ATCOM is a training Module. It provides
orientation for the trainers about how to go
about in teaching and assessing attitude and
communication competencies to medical
professionals.
• Modules are spread throughout the course.
• It is hoped that the successful implementation
of the ATCOM modules will be a forerunner of
the transition to competency based medical
education(CBME) program envisaged by the
Medical Council of India.