2 February 2001
Medical Schools must not accept dishonest behaviour among students
EMBARGO UNTIL 00.01 on Friday 2 Feb
The University of Dundee's Medical School has taken a proactive stance on
the national issue of academic misconduct by giving all medical students
a written code of practice on what constitutes unacceptable behaviour.
Their action follows the University's recent study exploring medical
students' attitudes and reported behaviour on academic misconduct, as
reported in the British Medical Journal (Vol 321)
Academic misconduct does exist amongst a minority of medical students and needs to be taken seriously by medical schools, finds the study.
Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Dundee Professor
David Levison: "The results of this proactive study give medical schools
up and down the country food for thought. There is no reason to suppose
that students at Dundee are any different from students at any other
medical school. What the study shows is that we need to be explicit to
our students about what constitutes academic misconduct and unacceptable
behaviour. At the University of Dundee we have already taken the results
of this study on board and produced a written code of practice for
students giving clear guidelines on these issues."
The study was carried out with full co-operation between the Dean and the
students. It was carried out in response to recognition nationally that
academic misconduct can be a problem.
An anonymous questionnaire was completed by 461 students in all years at
Dundee University medical school. The questionnaire had 14 scenarios in
which a fictitious student, "John", engaged in dishonest behaviour. For
each scenario, students were asked whether they felt John was wrong and
whether they had done or would consider doing the same.
Most students felt that most of the scenarios were wrong. However, the
proportion of students reporting that they had engaged in or would
consider engaging in the scenarios varied from 2% for copying answers in
a degree examination to 56% for copying directly from published text and
only listing it as a reference. About a third of students reported that
they had engaged in or would consider engaging in behaviour described in
four of the scenarios: exchanging information about a clinical examination,
writing "nervous system examination normal" when this hadn't been
performed, lending work to others, and copying published text without
appropriate referencing.
Some of these findings are worrying, as they suggest that in some cases
there is no consensus among students on what constitutes unacceptable
behaviour, say the authors. Academic misconduct needs to be taken
seriously by medical schools as it casts doubt on the validity of
qualifications, they conclude.
Medical schools must make their institutional position and their
expectations of students absolutely clear from day one, writes Shimon
Glick on an accompanying editorial. The future of the medical profession
depends on preserving and restoring public trust in doctors, but this
trust must be deserved and earned, he concludes./ends