In a government medical college in New Delhi, medical and nursing students routinely get to see in their classrooms short clips of movies — from the 2019 Bollywood biographical romantic comedy-drama The Sky is Pink to Rashomon, a 1950 Japanese film.

The clips — three to 10 minutes long — seek to convey to students concepts critical to maintaining a healthy equation between doctors and patients, an aspect of medical education that is widely perceived as having been long neglected in the country.

A model curriculum for the undergraduate MBBS programme proposed by the apex medical regulatory authority in 2019 introduced a module called "attitude, ethics, and communication" (AETCOM) which, some faculty members say, was challenging because they lacked the training to impart AETCOM skills.

“We call them trigger films because they’re intended to trigger questions in the minds of students,” Satendra Singh, professor of physiology at the University College of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and a member of a faculty group that uses the film clips as part of AETCOM education.

Now, Singh and his colleagues have shown through an assessment exercise that students gained more knowledge and understanding of concepts they were taught using the trigger films than when they were presented with “case studies” or classroom lectures on AETCOM.

Their findings come against a backdrop of long-standing concerns about tensions between the medical community and sections of the public, often manifesting itself as violence against healthcare workers by relatives of patients. Many doctors have been concerned about both relatives’ inability to appreciate and doctors’ lack of skills to manage relatives during difficult situations.

The trigger films were an effective method of teaching, Singh and his colleagues Farah Khaliq and Nonita Gangwani wrote, reporting their study findings in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics on Friday. Their 2022-23 study assessed the impact of trigger films on a sample of 170 medical students.

“They provoke inquisitive minds, generate curiosity, and make them think about being in the medical profession … trigger films could, thus, have the potential to contribute more effectively to making them compassionate doctors,” the faculty members wrote in the journal.

Singh and his colleagues selected clips from Anand (1971), Ankur Arora Murder Case (2013), Doctor G (2022) among other films to teach ethics, professionalism, and beneficence. They used clips from The Sky is Pink to convey the concept of autonomy of minors.

They have used clips from Khamoshi: The Musical (1996), Paa (2009), and Tare Zameen Par (2007) as part of efforts to impart lessons in disability competencies and Tali and Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui (2021) for lessons in trans-affirmative competencies.

They screened clips of Rashomon to stir thoughts about issues relating to gender discrimination, cultural diversity, biases and prejudices and the need to appreciate different points of view.

“These trigger films were like boosters for our emotional quotient and empathy development,” one medical student at the UCMS wrote in response to a questionnaire in the study.