Projekt

In the USA, but not in Germany, most University Medical Centers have installed policies that regulate contacts of medical students with pharmaceutical companies with the aim to reduce conflicts of interests. Moreover, several researchers and institutes have developed teaching courses to inform students about conflicts of interest and the risk of bias. Recently, in Germany adequate risk communication has been included in the national catalogue of learning goals due to the physician role as communicator, although only very few and only project based courses on mandatory risk communication in Germany are established. The current project has three goals: Firstly, available national and international teaching courses on conflicts of interest and risk of bias in medicine will be reviewed, and a tailored state of the art teaching session regarding conflicts of interest and bias detection will be developed and its feasibility tested. Secondly, in a randomized controlled trial, it will be tested whether such a teaching session may change attitudes of students regarding conflicts of interest, and whether it may change the competence of students in informing (standardized) patients in an unbiased way. Thirdly, the long term effects of the teaching session regarding attitudes and competence of the students will be studied by assessing students 6 months after the intervention. The results of the study will be the prerequisite to pursue the goal to successfully implement such teaching sessions at German universities and to change attitudes and behavior of physicians in an effective way in the long term.

• Prof. Dr. Klaus Lieb

  Universitätsmedizin der Johannes
  Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
  Fachbereich Medizin
  Klinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie
  920
  Mainz
  

• Dr. Jana Jünger

  Universität Heidelberg
  Medizinische Fakultät
  Kompetenzzentrum f. Prüfungen
  in der Medizin B.-W.
  Heidelberg