Medical Students’ Views on Medical Ethics Education-A Mixed Method Study

Background: Medical Ethics (ME) is considered an integral component of medical education around the world. However, limited training is being offered to medical students in Pakistan. Objectives: This study was designed to evaluate medical students' perspectives regarding medical ethics and to explore their experiences about medical ethics as a subject at a private medical college in Lahore, where Medical Ethics was formally introduced as part of the undergraduate curriculum in 2017. Methods: This mixed-method study included medical students from all five years of medical college. Quantitative component included a survey questionnaire, and the sample size was 410.  Convenient sampling technique was used. Qualitative component included focus group discussions. The students who have attended medical ethics lectures were included in the study. Results: The response rate was 82.72%. There were more females in gender distribution; 76.1% were female and 23.9% were male. Most respondents (74.9%) found medical ethics classes interesting and 72% thought that lecture sessions were important in medical ethics. Conclusions: Medical students find medical ethics as an important component of medical education. Although it is hard to correlate ethics education with their clinical experience as medical students, they believe that medical ethics education can be useful. Social and cultural issues inform clinical decision-making in Pakistan and hence these discussions should be incorporated into medical education. Further studies must be conducted on the actions that need to be taken to help students internalize the ethical issues.

Role and Impact of Human Resources on Tourism Industry: A Case Study of Pakistan

The vibrant tourism industry can be used as a catalyst to achieve socio-economic development of particularly the under-privileged and poor masses in the developing countries. This holds very pertinent and factual in case of Pakistan. One of the key factors affecting the performance and growth of tourism industry is said its human resources. This dissertation evaluates and analyses the tourism industry of Pakistan with main focus on understanding the role and attitudes of the key stakeholders of tourism industry (Student, faculty, Corporation and Government) on the development of tourism human resources. The review of literature suggests that the issue of HR can be better investigated and understood from the perspective key tourism stakeholder through the lens of stakeholder theory approach. A comprehensive analytical and conceptual framework is developed in this study to elucidate how the perceptions and attitudes of key stakeholders affect the development of HR in tourism industry of Pakistan. In methodology a semi structured survey questionnaire was administered to get the data from the tourist students, tourist faculty and tourist corporations. 258 Students, 31 faculty and 18 corporation managers participated and completely filled up the survey questionnaire. In total (307) comprised the sample of this study. The data was empirically analyzed through the applications of descriptive statistics, factor analysis, Granger Causal Test, and independent T test using SPSS software 20. This study found that the availability of trained, skilled and educated human resources is a key driver to the performance of Pakistan tourism industry. With regard to stakeholder approach, the positiveness, competence and resource fullness of students and faculty working at tourist educational institutions are the chief stakeholders in ultimate development of human resources in Pakistan tourism Market (PTM). It is evidenced that tourist students perceptions to join tourism sector worsens as they practically exposed to tourist organizations. This dilution of positive perception is attributed to the poor or lack of effective HR policies from tourist corporations and government. Therefore, it is suggested that tourist corporations and government training and development programs aimed at developing and nurturing human resources and making working environment conducive at tourism organizations. Further, the relationship between tourism and economic growth of Pakistan is found to be bidirectional. Therefore, it is of utmost important that the government should assign special focus on development of tourism sector in order to increase the base of its economic growth and subsequently raise the socio-economic standard of the masses at local, regional and national levels.