Teaching Professional Ethics in Undergraduate Medical Education: An Islamic Perspective

Abstract

Pakistan is an Islamic country where overwhelming majority of undergraduate medical students are Muslims. In our settings thus moral ethical values take their origin from religion and get reinforced by religious knowledge. This fact is of great advantage to the educators in this country as they do not have to advocate too strongly the practice of ethical values. They only need to reinforce the faith of the students in order to ensure observance of ethics by the students. Similarly the concept of accountability is built‐in to religious beliefs and does not need any different emphasis. It appears that it will require strong role modeling for this purpose. However, for those who have faith in Islam, the Holy Quran sets the Holy Prophet as the role model in these words: