Summary: In 2022, Japan revised its Model Core Curriculum for Medical Education and introduced a new component on “Health Crisis Management.” Medical students are required to understand the following aspects of Health Crisis Management: the concept, types, and responses to health crises; risk communication; legal framework; disaster health management, including the role of the Disaster Medical Assistance Team. In response, Okayama University restructured its health crisis management curriculum and launched a new class in 2023. This class, which targets fourth-year students, involves group discussions on optimal medical resource allocation strategies during large-scale natural disasters. Each group is tasked with presenting their proposed allocation strategy and emphasizing its strengths and limitations, followed by a Q&A session where they explain the background and details of their strategy. The experiences of the class revealed that medical students consider factors beyond the severity and urgency of medical conditions when allocating resources, such as whether the patient belongs to the “guild” of medical professionals. Some interesting convictions expressed by medical students will also be included in the congress presentation, such as the idea that medical professionals should receive priority over the general public for treatment, while local government legislators and local worthies should not. The medical students who are expected to become practicing physicians across Japan in the coming years are learning about health crisis management from various perspectives under the new curriculum. This novel course is designed to help students understand that preparedness and accountability are crucial in Health Crisis Management and that there is no absolute right answer to the question of optimal medical resource distribution during a disaster because of the various values, cultures, and philosophies involved.
Iida et al. (Sun,) studied this question.