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In an arts integrated interdisciplinary study set to investigate ways to improve social accountability (SA) in medical education, our research team has established a renewed understanding of compassion in the current SA movement. This paper explores the co-evolution of compassion and SA. The study used an arts integrated approach to investigate people's perceptions of SA in four medical schools across Australia, Canada, and the USA. Each school engaged approximately 25 participants who partook in workshops and in-depth interviews. We began with a study of SA and the topic of compassion emerged out of our qualitative data and biweekly meetings within the research team. Content analysis of the data and pedagogical discussion brought us to realize the importance of compassion in the practice of SA. The cultivation of compassion needs to play a significant role in a socially accountable medical educational system. Medical schools as educational institutions may operate themselves with compassion as a driving force in engaging partnership with students and communities. Social accountability without compassion is not SA; compassion humanizes institutional policy by engaging sympathy and care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a study that interviewed 36 art-based health researchers, one constant element shines: stories. This article investigates and theorizes the roles and meanings of stories in art-based health research. It discusses how stories can function as part of the scientific method. Built on the epistemological foundation of story as a way of complex scientific modelling, the article introduces the use of literary theory for the critical enquiry into the application of art in health research, arguing that art-based research is more than using artwork for data collection and knowledge translation. Story-telling and art-making, as it proposes, is a process of modelling real social change through the imaginary space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While social accountability (SA) is regarded as an obligation or mandate for medical school administration, it runs the danger of becoming a bureaucratic checkbox. Compassion which leads to social responsiveness (SR), in contrast, is often recognized as an individual characteristic, detached from the public domain. The two, however, complement each other in practice. Institutions must be truly socially accountable, which is possible if there is spontaneous SR to the needs, and is fueled by compassion. Compassion in this article is defined as a "feeling for other people's sufferings, and the desire to act to relieve the suffering." Compassion has a long history, whereas SA is more recently described concept that follows the historical development of social justice. SR is the moral or ethical duty of an individual to behave in a way that benefits society. Not everyone feels the need to do something for others. Even if the need is felt, there may be a lack of will to act for the needs or to act effectively to fulfill the needs of society. The reasons are many, some visible and others not. SR provides the basis for being compassionate; hence, medical schools need to include SR as a criterion in their admissions process for student recruitment and inculcate compassion in health professions education and health care. By fostering SR and engaging compassion and self-compassion to achieve SA, we can humanize medical education systems and health care., Competing Interests: None