Legal Responsability for Medical Students – Paraguay (IFMSA-Paraguay)

Name of the activity: Legal Responsability for Medical Students

Country/NMO: Paraguay (IFMSA-Paraguay)

Program: Ethics & Human Rights in Health

Contact information: [email protected]

Type of the activity: Education

General description:

“Legal Responsability for Medical Students” is the first conference in Paraguay about legal aspects of medical practice. In collaboration with a doctor specialized, we open a space for students, not only to acquire new knowledge about legal documents and laws in medicine, but also to clear doubts and be able to find solutions and have a quick decision-making ability, in case they find themselves in certain situations, where the legal aspect may be compromised.

Focus area:

Rights of patients, doctors and medical students

Problem statement:

In Paraguay, there has been multiple lawsuits to medical students and recently graduated doctors for malpractice, injury, negligence and omission of help. Talking on a daily basis to our classmates, we realized that, as medical students, we have a minimun knowledge on the legal field related to health. During the years of our university carrer, we learn everything we need in order to develop, in the future, as health professionals, we learn what we should and should not do in certain situations. We are trained to know techniques and attitudes that we must take whe it come to treating a patient. Upon arrival at internship years, we are expected to put everything we have learned into practice, but what happens when we are wrong or act on a wrong way? What legal implications will our actions have, whether these are wrong or not? We are not aware of Paraguayan laws when it comes to practicing medicine, especially when we are students.

Target groups and beneficiaries:

Target group – medical students
Beneficiaries – medical students, population in general, future healthcare professionals

Objectives and indicators of success:

– Encourage interest and resposability through knowledge of laws related to medical practice: 1. The number of participants and their responses to feedback form; 2. Previous surveys on the main topics to be discuss at the conference.

– Open a forum of discussion on legal aspects in medical practice: 1. Number of questions and scenarios proposed by the audience to be discussed with the facilitator.

Methodology:

The conference starts with a small welcoming and introduction, given by the activity coordinator and the doctor (facilitator), aswering questions preciously selected from the audience. After this, the discussion is open to all participants to clear doubts and present scenarios and possible solutions related to problems on the legal field on medicine. At the end, participants will get access to a survey, where they will answers questions related to the content of the conference and also, they can give feedback.

Plans for evaluation:

We will evaluate the impact of the activity with the number of participants (to evaluate interest), number of questions and scenarios proposed during the discussion (to evaluate knowledge and interest), survey at the end with a questionnary related to legal documents and actual laws in medicine.