Moral education in medical schools

Abstract

The present report summarizes challenges in teaching medical ethics, defines its goals, describes theoretical frameworks for moral education, and reviews strategies for teaching medical ethics to serve as guidelines in developing medical ethics instruction. Medical teachers should clarify the instructional goals in cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral domains. The cognitive developmental and behavior-analytic theories called for ethical instruction using a series of discussions based on real-life ethical dilemmas while pointing out all the basic rules related to medical practice. Ethical courses for medical students should be student-centered, problem-based, and integrative. Ethical instruction should be systematically taught to every student, but additional elective courses could also be used. Moral education for residents should be more focused to issues specific to their specialties. Medical researchers need both formal ethical training and informal teaching, and role modeling. Finally, experienced staff could use small group discussions of shared ethical problems to maintain their ethical knowledge and skills.