Breaking the silence: an HIV-related educational intervention for medical students in Zimbabwe.

Problem: A culture of silence surrounding HIV is a major contributor to continued HIV transmission and poor care for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Aim: To encourage medical leadership in addressing stigma and fear related to HIV at individual and community levels

Objective: To pilot a mini-course for final year medical students in Zimbabwe that demonstrates stigma-reduction knowledge and skills needed to communicate information about HIV to patients, to address ethical implications of testing versus not testing for HIV, to increase awareness of the medical and preventive benefits of knowing one's HIV status and showing people how to cope with the emotional burden of dealing with HIV everyday.

Design: Methods of proven effectiveness for training medical students in ethics and communication skills were used such as presentations by well respected role models and opinion leaders, role-playing, small group discussions, accompanied by materials indicating local resources, in three afternoon teaching sessions.

Setting: University of Zimbabwe College of Medicine.

Participants: 60 medical students, six lecturers, two facilitators and a group of actors.

Main Outcome Measures: Evaluation of the course by students showed appreciation of the course as measured on a scale of one to five for content and usefulness with requests for further inputs into the curriculum; model of mini-course that can be used by other medical schools in the southern Africa region and other areas of emerging HIV epidemics.

Conclusions: A brief educational intervention can help medical students to cope with the extraordinary challenge of providing care in high HIV prevalence countries and may contribute towards better leadership in addressing HIV epidemics.