Medical ethics seeks to teach a method of inquiry. In this innovative curriculum, students move from basic ethic principles to a critical thinking framework in order to apply their skills and knowledge in topics and cases relevant to the human body, systems-based or clerkship curriculum.

 

Director:
  • Luciana Garbayo, M.D., Ph.D.

Learning objectives:
  • Identify medical ethics issues and dilemmas in clinical, research and public health contexts.
  • Recognize and self-identify values, beliefs, bias, prejudices, heuristics and institutional medical culture that may impact medical judgment, professional behavior, and patient/population health outcomes.
  • Navigate medical uncertainty ethically by differentiating between personal belief and professional opinion in patient-physician shared decision-making.
  • Use intellectual and humanistic tools to improve both scientific and ethical reasoning & understanding in order to prevent or mitigate medical error; uphold or improve standards of medical practice within learning health systems.
  • Act with an empathic attitude and in a compassionate, altruistic manner with patients at all times, displaying recognition of the patients’ humanity, vulnerability and centeredness in the process of shared decision-making and medical care.
  • Utilize self-reflection, emotional self-regulation and moral creativity to recognize and treat patients’ experience of disease and illness.
  • Engage effectively in ethical dialogue and ethical cooperative practices with patients, interprofessional teams, colleagues and community at large.
  • Integrate the ethical and scientific dimensions of one’s medical professional identity, where medical recommendations should be considered both from a scientific standard and ethical standard.
  • Participate actively and systematically in improving the ethical environment in one’s professional setting including educational, clinical, research and public health.
  • Through thoughtful integration of human experience overtime, become a ‘good doctor’, who can understand and act at the highest ethical, scientific and procedural standards of the medical profession.

 

Humanities integration examples include Narrative Medicine and Arts in Medicine.