Expanding on Traditional Medical Ethics Education: Incorporating Moral Courage
by Elizabeth DeVore, M.D.; Mary Blazek, M.D., MHPE | September 10, 2024
Article Citation: Bansal E, Rice T. Teaching Moral Courage and Rights-Based Leadership in Medicine: A Cross-Disciplinary Exploration. Teach Learn Med 2024; 1-11. ePub ahead of print. DOI: 10.1080/10401334.2024.2369611
What is this article about?
This article focuses on the need for updated ethical and leadership education for medical students that reflects the daily realities of physicians’ clinical environment. In many schools, ethics teaching focuses on four core bioethical principles and short clinical vignettes with single correct answers. Medical students are still left to develop moral attitudes and ethical decision-making passively. The traditional approach does not reflect the need for situational ethical judgment when official guidelines cannot address high-uncertainty or high-intensity situations. This article describes similarities between leadership training in medicine and the military and uses a comparative analysis of professional ethics in the two disciplines to explore rights-based teaching methods using case-based active learning and modifications to medical ethics curricula.
Why should you read the article?
Moral courage is the ability to effectively share concerns and behave in line with one’s values even in the face of situational pressures. The authors present moral courage as a bulwark against the moral apathy and burnout that plague medical professionals and trainees. In a supportive learning environment, students may reflect on experiences of moral distress in a more productive way that highlights core values and encourages response to the inequities and unintended harms that occur in medicine. Leaders’ public embodiment of their moral convictions has been demonstrated in other disciplines to strengthen team members’ expression of moral concerns and promote concrete, collaborative actions that enhance the practice environment.
How can you use this article?
The authors propose a framework for rights-based ethics education in medical school. In addition to suggested changes to the curriculum and outcomes to target, they provide several clinical vignettes as examples of complex ethical dilemmas that reflect medical practice particularly involving learners. Suggestions to readers support new developments in ethics education. Implementation of this pedagogy and evaluation of its impacts are areas of further exploration in medical education research.
Review Author: Elizabeth DeVore, M.D.; Chief Education Resident, Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan Medical Center (co-authored with Mary Blazek, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry), Ann Arbor, MI. Organization: Association of Directors of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry