“Rebuilding what has eroded”: a descriptive, survey-based study of near-peer instructors’ experiences in a critical pedagogy-based sociomedical course

Purpose: Near-peer assisted learning has been deployed in numerous settings within medical education with promising results. However, there is very little experience utilizing near-peers in sociomedical or cultural competency training. We recently described a novel model for sociomedical learning based on Introduction to Medicine and Society (IMS), a critical pedagogy-based course at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (PSOM). Near-peer facilitation, by senior medical students, is central to this model. The aim of this descriptive study is to examine how facilitating within this curriculum impacts senior medical students’ self-reported attitudes toward course content, medical education, as well as self-care and medical practice