Reframing Medical Education Through “Anthropological Fieldwork”: A Critical Review of an Overseas Training Program in the Philippines

Abstract (English)

This presentation critically examines an overseas training program in the Philippines for Japanese medical students, exploring the potential of anthropological "field education" as a framework for medical education. Drawing on the concept of field education as discussed in Field Education from Anthropologists: Learning Design toward SFL (Minoh et al., 2021), the study emphasizes the significance of embodiment, discomfort, and reflection in cultivating deeper cultural awareness and practical sensitivity among future healthcare professionals.
Traditional overseas programs tend to focus on observation and knowledge transmission, often lacking opportunities for embodied, reflective engagement. In contrast, field education encourages learners to be physically and emotionally situated in unfamiliar environments, confront feelings of discomfort, and engage in reflective processes that connect personal experience with broader cultural contexts.
This research is based on qualitative analysis of reflection reports from 97 students across 17 iterations of the program. Reports were categorized into three levels of reflection—deep, moderate, and surface—based on the presence and depth of embodiment, discomfort, and reflective interpretation. Key findings include: (1) deeper reflections often arose from unstructured, serendipitous moments of cultural encounter, and (2) many students lacked the conceptual tools to process these experiences meaningfully without structured guidance.
By reinterpreting the existing training through an anthropological lens, this study identifies gaps in current educational design and proposes enhancements to systematically foster reflective, embodied learning. Ultimately, the paper argues for a reconfiguration of global medical training programs to incorporate anthropological pedagogies that prepare students for the complexity and uncertainty of real-world clinical environments.