An Educational Proposal to Address Conscientious Objection in Reproductive Health during Medical Education

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVES To evaluate the effectiveness of role-playing in addressing the issue of conscientious objection in the medical curriculum. METHODS This is an intervention study involving 120 medical students on completion of their internship in Perinatology.The project consisted of eight modules with 15 students in each. Initially a questionnaire was applied to obtain the students’ demographic information, religion, ethical knowledge of conscientious objection in medical practice, whether or not the students agreed with it, and the level of comfort in addressing situations such as legal abortion, the prescription of emergency contraceptives, and giving advice on contraception to young adolescents. Subsequently, three short films, created exclusively for the project, were shown. The first addressed a doctor’s refusal to perform an abortion on a 15-year-old girl who had been the victim of sexual violence. The second simulatedes a doctor’s objection to providing advice on contraception to a 13-year-old adolescent without parental consent, and the third portrayed the doctor’s refusal to prescribe emergency contraception to a young woman after having unprotected intercourse on the 14th day of her cycle. A discussion was then instigated on the following topics: the existing legislation on the subject, the doctor’s right to conscientious objection, violation of the patient’s autonomy, and the potential for discrimination and harm to the patient’s health due to the doctor’s refusal. Subgroups of three students were then formed, to simulate clinical cases, with the students taking turns to play the roles of the physician, patient and observer. At the end, the questionnaire was reapplied. The data were analyzed by the χ2 test, t-test and McNemar’s test, with a level of significance of 5%. RESULTS Abortion was rejected by 35.8% of the students, contraception for adolescents by 17.5%, and emergency contraception by 5.8%. The predictors identified with legal abortion were stronger religious belief (p < 0.001) and more frequent attendance of religious services (p = 0.034). The refusal to provide contraception to adolescents was significantly higher among women (p = 0.037).Of the sample, 25% did not explain the reason for their refusal, 15% did not describe all procedures, and 25% said they would not forward patients. The change in comfort in conducting legal abortion after the intervention was significant (p < 0.001). The same was observed in the attitude to providing contraceptives to young adolescents (p < 0.001) and in the prescription of emergency contraception (p = 0.002). The change of opinion regarding objection to legal abortion was significant (p = 0.003), as was the attitude to providing and also regarding the contraceptives to young adolescents (p = 0.012). No differences were observed in the prescription of emergency contraception (p = 0.500). CONCLUSIONS The application of this methodology in the participant group made the students more comfortable about conducting cases like those discussed, and provided technical, legal and ethical content for a better grounding of their opinions.