1. Judith Sim (BMTO) and Hannah Lesshafft (BMTO, Usher Institute)
Between Paradigms: building competence in social sciences for students of medical sciences
Judith Sim (BMTO) and Hannah Lesshafft (BMTO, Usher Institute)

2. Health, Illness and Society 3
Distribution of health and illness: epidemiology
Experiencing illness and providing care:
social sciences
Ethical provision of care and distribution of health-related resources:
bioethics, philosophy
Effective interventions:
social policy and social
science
Beyond the disease is the person, but beyond the person are always the time and place and particular circumstances in which they live and die
Helman, 2006:35

3. Teaching materials and activities:
Stories from individual patients (via videos or student-conducted interviews)
Qualitative research findings on experiences of illness
Ethics case studies
Epidemiological studies
Debates on e.g. assisted dying or limits to the concept of ‘the expert patient’

4. Opportunities
‘I liked Molecules, Genes and Cells but by the beginning of third year I was really, really ready to look beyond that kind of frame’
PTAS Respondent
Students can be very ready to put into a social context earlier experimental or laboratory-based study of disease and the human body.
HIS can tap into pre-existing enthusiasm for e.g. global health, ethics or patient care.
Come to us with interest

5. Challenges
‘I believe that men report fewer symptoms compared to women and as a consequence reach the threshold for depression less’ (Gardner, 2016)
[from an essay on the influence of gender on prevalence of depression]
Establishing that HIS is based on specialised bodies of knowledge
Challenging:
‘common-sense’ assumptions
that HIS is material which ‘everybody knows’ and to which an everyday or common-sense logic can be applied
that opinion cannot substitute for building evidence-based argument

6. Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme (PTAS)
Small grant to do research with the aim to improve teaching
Collaborative project with staff and students
Research questions:
What challenges do students face in moving between the disciplinary approaches of the natural and social sciences?
How do students understand similarities and differences in evidence and argument-building between the two disciplines?
What educational approaches and activities can support understanding of these differences and similarities in the transition from one disciplinary approach to another?

7. Methods
The PTAS team: 5 students who finished the HIS course and HIS staff
Initial focus group discussion (FGD) with the PTAS student team
Subsequent semi-structured individual interviews with previous HIS students (conducted by PTAS team)
Thematic analysis (HIS staff)
To date: preliminary results from the FGD
and 4 individual student interviews

8. Preliminary results of PTAS project
Anxiety about engaging with social sciences literature
Feeling “frightened” for the first few weeks
“Different style of writing, difficult to wrap your head around it”
“It took until midway through [the course] to “get it”
Then started enjoying it more
Appreciation of “more human” side of medicine
Interviews with patients (for essay 2) helped “making the switch”
Understanding patients’ experiences, “connecting to real people”
Ability to use this understanding in clinical classes

9. Preliminary results of PTAS project
Critical thinking sparked new interests
“It made me really angry… for the first time I’ve become interested in politics, the politics that govern health, the socio-economic determinants of it.”
Questioning ‘common-sense assumptions’ provoked discussions
“What is health?” became a running joke throughout the course and was discussed in light of different topics, even in tea breaks
Aha-moments when learning from students from other countries

10. Preliminary results of PTAS project
Need of support with social science theory
Uncertainty about what is expected in assignments
Asked for lists of main concepts to help preparing assignments
More guidance on techniques to read and write in social sciences
__________________________________________________
A one-off introduction workshop will not be sufficient
Students need time to learn how to read and build arguments in social sciences
Patient experience serves as good entry point
Continuous adaptation of course structure and content