Clinical Ethics

Clinical medicine confronts physicians with daily ethical problems. The MED 521 Clinical Ethics elective is aimed at medical students seeking to develop greater knowledge in medical ethics. Through a combination of asynchronous learning modules and active learning sessions (a combination of in-person and virtual) the elective will introduce students to foundational topics in medical ethics, including basic principles of medical ethics, informed consent and refusal, medical decision-making, end-of-life, as well as newer topics such big data and artificial intelligence (AI) ethics and precision medicine ethics. This seminar-style elective will provide students with basic understanding of the philosophical, historical, legal, and religious underpinnings of bioethical debates. The elective will use adult learning principles and flipped-classroom approach to learning and will consist of a series of online video modules that students can access from anywhere and associated in-person engagement sessions that explore practical applications of the material presented in the modules. This innovative combination of online modules, engagement sessions, and assessments is designed to prepare students for practical application of ethical knowledge in clinical practice.

Course Learning Objectives:

By the end of this course, the student should be able to:

1. Identify three (or more) common ethical challenges or topics arising in patient care.
2. Describe three (or more) basic ethically reasoned and practical strategies for addressing these ethical challenges.
3. Describe two approaches or strategies for capacity assessment.
4. Compare and contrast three (or more) common ethical challenges arising in research, data ethics and artificial intelligence (AI) with same challenges occurring in daily clinical practice.