All about ethics
Posted: February 23, 2010
Inaugural event addresses virtue, professionalism in medicine
For faculty, it was about paying it forward. For students, it meant staying focused on their reasons for entering the profession. For both, and approximately 200 of their peers, the inaugural medical ethics night held December 3 on ATSU’s Missouri campus, meant a renewed commitment to values.
Howard Brody, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch, kicked off the night with “Little Boy and the Seven Teachings: Virtue and Professionalism in Medicine.” His lecture, the dinner, and discussion topics all were funded by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation.
This is Dr. Brody’s second visit to ATSU. He gave ATSU-KCOM’s commencement speech in 2004, and said that he enjoys giving insight to future medical professionals.
“There is no way for me to pay back all the valuable time and information that my educators instilled upon me, so you pay it forward to your students,” Dr. Brody said. “The reward that we get is the one student who will occasionally come back to us and say, ‘I remember something that you taught me years ago, and it stuck with me.’ When you make a difference for the student, that is our best reward.”
Dr. Brody’s talk touched on a number of issues, including not only what to do in ethical dilemmas, but also maintaining professionalism in everyday work and keeping healthy relationships.
“If we let them be, students have wonderful moral values and a lot of moral commitment to what they do,” Dr. Brody said. “One of the things that we educators have to worry about is why so many of them, by the time they are done, don’t seem to have the same commitment to those moral values as they did in the beginning. What is it that we educators do to them that seems to drive some of that out of them and make some of them more cynical and less committed to what they’re doing?”
Trish Sexton, D.H.Ed., associate professor and project director for the A.P. Gold grant, was pleased with the event and lecture, especially the discussion that followed.
“Dr. Brody was wonderful. His talk was insightful, and he was wonderful to work with all along the way,” she said. “Students were telling me that this is exactly what they need to hear right now, particularly with regard to keeping perspective in medicine and not allowing the business aspect to become primary in their careers.”
First-year student Ian McInnis said the speech made him think about the big picture. “He made you think about why we are here and about our motivation to come to medical school, and I think that is an important part of staying ethical,” he said. “It’s important to have events like this to help maintain your focus. In your career, you are going to see lots of examples of the wrong way to do things, so it is good to see stuff like this to keep fresh in your mind how you want to treat patients.”
Despite the event’s success, Dr. Sexton believes that more has to be done. She explained that there are many opportunities for students to talk with their mentors about this subject, and there is a project in the works to allow students to take an online elective in bioethics that should be available before summer 2010.
However, Dr. Sexton knows the focus has to be on working it into classroom practice.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of time in our curriculum right now for serious medical ethics. It is something that our students realize that they need and want very badly. So, every way that we can bring this topic to them for discussion, for thought or whatever the venue, it is very positive,” she said. “If we can continue to get Arnold P. Gold funding, we would love to make this an annual event.”