Embedding Ethics Education in Clinical Clerkships by Identifying Clinical Ethics Competencies: The Vanderbilt Experience

HEC Forum 32 (2):163-174 (2020)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The clinical clerkships in medical school are the first formal opportunity for trainees to apply bioethics concepts to clinical encounters. These clerkships are also typically trainees’ first sustained exposure to the “reality” of working in clinical teams and the full force of the challenges and ethical tensions of clinical care. We have developed a specialized, embedded ethics curriculum for Vanderbilt University medical students during their second year to address the unique experience of trainees’ first exposure to clinical care. Our embedded curriculum is centered around core “ethics competencies” specific to the clerkship: for Medicine, advanced planning and end-of-life discussions; for Surgery, informed consent; for Pediatrics, the patient-family-provider triad; for Obstetrics and Gynecology, women’s autonomy, unborn child’s interests, and partner’s rights; and for Neurology/Psychiatry, decision-making capacity. In this paper, we present the rationale for these competencies, how we integrated them into the clerkships, and how we assessed these competencies. We also review the additional ethical issues that have been identified by rotating students in each clerkship and discuss our strategies for continued evolution of our ethics curriculum.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Hermeneutical clinical ethics: A commentary.Stephen L. Daniel - 1994 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 15 (2).
Should research ethics triumph over clinical ethics?Michael H. Kottow - 2007 - Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 13 (4):695-698.
Clinical ethics as medical hermeneutics.David C. Thomasma - 1994 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 15 (2).
The critical turn in clinical ethics and its continous enhancement.Laurence B. McCullough - 2005 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 30 (1):1 – 8.
What Kind of Doing is Clinical Ethics?George J. Agich - 2005 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 26 (1):7-24.

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-04-20

Downloads
12 (#929,405)

6 months
5 (#246,492)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?