Teaching Medical Students Moral Methods

Abstract

Abstract Nearly every medical school in the United States now teaches ethics. Although we often do an excellent job teaching ethics topics, we are less successful in teaching ethics methods. If we teach only ethics topics, we do students a disservice, since they are then only equipped to respond to the particular topics we have taught them about. Conversely, if we are successful in teaching ethics methods, students will be equipped to handle any ethical dilemma they may encounter, since we have given them a framework within which to resolve the problem. Thus, this class was designed to fill this gap and teach medical students ethics methods. The class was offered as a monthlong elective in the fourth year of medical school and met for 20 hours total—two sessions of 2.5 hours a week over 4 weeks. Student evaluations for the course were positive. Students rated the overall helpfulness of the course 4.4 out of 5.0. One student noted, “Every medical student should take an ethics course based on methods. Only discussing cases provides only half of what is necessary to be able to think about the right course of action.” When students were asked to list the skills they felt more confident in as a result of the course, responses included being able to recognize ethical conflicts, being able to approach and resolve ethical dilemmas, and being objective.

Keywords

• Bioethics
• Decision Making
• Principlism
• Casuistry
• Morality