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Piloting restorative justice community building practices in medical student education
Abstract   Peer reviewed

Piloting restorative justice community building practices in medical student education

C.L. Klasson, S. Sarin, C. Bernat, A. Kunz, A. Raghuram and A. Shibli-Rahhal
Patient education and counseling, Vol.137(Suppl), 109068
08/2025
DOI: 10.1016/j.pec.2025.109068

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Abstract

Background: Restorative justice (RJ) practices promote personal connection and humanistic values through story-telling that can be applied for community building and discussing complex issues. One such practice is community building circles (“circling”), where participants sit in a circle and take turns responding to short prompts from the circle leader using story-telling. Within healthcare, these practices can be useful tools to promote reflection and wellness, and to facilitate communication with colleagues and patients, and address feelings of isolation and burnout. To introduce our first-year medical students to these tools, we designed a small group session that used circling to discuss shame and resilience strategies. Methods: A third-year medical student with experience in RJ practices trained senior medical students to facilitate this activity, which included participation in an RJ circle followed by instruction on RJ principles and circling techniques. During the session, students were asked to share an incident where they felt shame and how they mitigated those feelings (resilience strategies). Following the session, we used online surveys to elicit facilitator and student perceptions and collected the resilience strategies described by participants. Findings: 175 medical students and 21 trained facilitators participated. 86% of facilitators felt that the circling structure positively impacted the session. Narrative responses identified two main strengths: (1) equitable discussion, and (2) comfortable sharing and vulnerability. Students’ responses indicated a desire for community building preceding the session to facilitate comfort with vulnerability. The most common resilience strategies described were: (1) minimizing shame via an understanding of shared struggles, (2) maintaining perspective of the ultimate goal of the medical journey, and (3) positively framing self-perception. Discussion: This RJ-based session was well received by students and facilitators and promoted communication within the groups. RJ circling is a promising approach for introducing resilience strategies that can impact learners’ well-being and ongoing communication in healthcare settings.

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