The Impact of a Study Trip to Auschwitz: Place-based Learning for Bioethics Education and Professional Identity Formation

There are increasing calls for coverage of medicine during the Holocaust in medical school curricula. This article describes outcomes from a Holocaust and medicine educational program featuring a study trip to Poland, which focused on physician complicity during the Holocaust, as well as moral courage in health professionals who demonstrated various forms of resistance in the ghettos and concentration camps. The trip included tours of key sites in Krakow, Oswiecim, and the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps, as well as meeting with survivors, lectures, reflective writings, and discussions. In-depth interviews and reflective writings were qualitatively analyzed. Resulting themes centered on greater understanding of the relationship between bioethics and the Holocaust, recognizing the need for moral courage and social awareness, deeper appreciation for the historical roles played by dehumanization and medical power and their contemporary manifestations, and the power of presence and experiential learning for bioethics education and professional identity formation. These findings evidence the significant impact of the experience and suggest broader adoption of pedagogies that include place-based and experiential learning coupled with critical reflection can amplify the impact of bioethics and humanism education as well as the process of professional identity formation of medical students.