This book is a collection of the best scientific research presented during the First International Conference of Indonesian Medical and Health Professions Education (INA-MHPE Conference 2022) hosted by the Departments of Medicine, Health Professions Education, and Bioethics in the Faculty of Medicine, Public Health, and Nursing at the Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Indonesia. The conference was held in co-operation with the co-hosts of Department of Medical Education at Universitas Indonesia (UI) and the Medical Education Unit in the Faculty of Medicine at Universitas Airlangga (UA), who will host the forthcoming INA-MHPEC in 2024 and 2026, respectively. This collection presents selected papers presented by health professionals and bioethicists from these leading institutions in Indonesia, focusing on the theme of character building in the context of health education for medical professionals in the twenty-first century. It considers effective learning strategies for character building, appropriate methods of character assessment, means of assessing and improving the learning environment in the community, clinics, university classes and hospitals, and addresses the role of the healthcare educator in providing resources, program evaluations, and effective medical management to support the development of healthcare professionals’ characters, and their modus operandi, in the future. The book is relevant to medical and public health professionals in Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and beyond.

This book addresses health professions educational challenges specific to non-Western cultures, implementing a shifting paradigm for educating future health professionals towards patient-centered care. While health professions education has received increasing attention in the last three decades, promoting student-centered learning principles pioneered by leaders in the medical community has, for the most part, remain rooted in the Western context. Building from Hofstede's analysis of the phenomena of cultural dimensions, which underpin the way people build and maintain their relationships with others and influence social, economic, and political well-being across nations, this book demarcates the different cultural dimensions between East and West, applied to medical education. The respective 'hierarchical' and 'collectivist' cultural dimensions are unpacked in several studies stemming from non-western countries, with the capacity to positively influence healthcare education and services. The book provides new insights for researchers and health professional educators to understand how cultural context influences the input, processes, and output of health professionals' education. Examples include how cultural context influences the ways in which students respond to teachers, how teachers giving feedback to students, and the challenges of peer feedback and group work. The authors also examine causes for student hesitation in proposing ideas, the pervasive cultural norm of maintaining harmony, the challenges of teamwork in clinical settings, the need to be sensitive to community health needs, the complexity of clinical decision making, and the challenge of how collectivist cultural values play into group dynamics. This book aims to advocate a more culturally-sensitive approach to educating health professionals, and will be relevant to both students and practitioners in numerous areas of public health and medical education.