Promoting a curriculum focused on the affective dimension of learning in medical education

Abstract: Effectively implementing a student-centered approach requires attending to students’ needs within the specific educational context and discipline. In the medical education field, it is important to consider students’ needs beyond the gathering of technical knowledge. Students enter medical schools driven by specific representations of social identity and interactions with patients. Here we share our experience of developing a psychology course for medical students. To facilitate an effective educational process, affectively relevant themes were used to stimulate discussions about psychological theories and constructs and to develop the course’s program by integrating students’ perspectives. Students considered their medical education to be enriched by enhancing their personal reflective skills on their own affective representations of the medical profession, their motivations and their personality. By sharing this experience, we aim to stimulate the development of cross-national medical curricula that tap into and attend to students’ need to value the affective dimension of learning.