Can we adequately teach ethics and ethical decision making via distant learning? A pandemic pilot

Abstract

The Corona virus pandemic rendered most live education this spring term impossible. Other formats and new ideas were needed to offer students the opportunity to learn unchanged learning content and outcomes. To replace our module on ethics and ethical decision making in emergency medicine with simulation patients we developed an e-learning module consisting of a case, trigger questions and literature for self-study. This was followed by a Microsoft Teams seminar in which the students discussed their questions in subgroups on the basis of their reading and developed a team product they then presented to the other team.Students valued this module as enabling a safe space for their beliefs and views. A vast majority deemed the topics as relevant, two thirds would retake the seminar. Despite a productive online discourse, this format should not be used as sole module under normal conditions since it lacks the (simulation) patient interaction but it can prove to be a valuable addendum to live teaching.

Keywords

• ethics course
• ethical decision making
• emergency medicine
• distant learning
• pandemic
• corona virus
• undergraduate medical education