Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T16:12:46.513Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Teaching Medical Ethics: Is It a Waste of Time?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Erich H. Loewy
Erich H. Loewy
Affiliation:
Medicine at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria and Associate Professor of Humanities (Ethics) at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The paper by Dr. Myles Sheehan “Why Doctors Hate Medical Ethics” (which would, I think, perhaps have been better entitled “Why Doctors in Training Hate Medical Ethics”) highlights some of the problems of teaching ethics to an extremely weary group of house officers who may look at ethics as a waste of time, as a requirement that must be overcome, or as “a lot of crap” Although Dr. Shee-han's paper offers a number of interesting and valuable insights, it really fails to say why residents hate the teaching of medical ethics any more than they may hate any other conference which, inevitably, intrudes on their time. In this response, I do not so much want to take issue with Sheehan's paper as to comment and to offer some of my own experiences teaching ethics. To do so, I am fully aware, may be regarded as matching anecdote with anecdote, a tiresome and ultimately futile process.

Type
Bioethics Education
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , Spring 1994 , pp. 296 - 299
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Sheehan, MN. Why doctors hate medical ethics. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 1994;3:287–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

2. Sulmasy, DP, Geller, G, Levine, DM, Faden, R. Medical house officer's knowledge, attitudes, and confidence regarding medical ethics. Archives of Internal Medicine 1990;150;2509–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Rousseau, JJ. Du Contrat Social. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1972.Google Scholar

4. Rousseau, JJ. Discours sur I'Origine et les Fondaments de Vlnequalite parmi les Hommes. Paris: Gallimard, 1965.Google Scholar

5. Loewy, EH. Freedom and Community: The Ethics of Interdependence. Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1993.Google Scholar

6. Schopenhauer, A. Preisschrift über die Gundlage der Moral. In: Arthur Schopenhauer Samtliche Werke. Band III. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1986,632–802.Google Scholar

7. Rousseau, JJ. Emile: ou de I'Education. Paris: Gamier Freres, 1957.Google Scholar

8. Loewy, EH: Teaching ethics to medical students. Journal of Medical Education 1986;61:661–5.Google ScholarPubMed