JCEHP JCEHP JCEHP JCEHP JCEHP  
     title   icon icon icon  
  icon icon icon  
HOME  |  SITE MAP  |  CONTACT US
Your Location: Home > Volume 16, Issue 3 

CURRENT ISSUE

BACK ISSUES

SUBSCRIBE

ADVERTISE

ABOUT JCEHP

FOR AUTHORS

JCEHP AWARD

SEARCH
 
Volume 16 (3)

Volume 16, Issue 3, Summer 1996
J Contin Educ Health Prof 1996; 16(3):173-180
ORIGINAL ARTICLES

Physician Ethics and the Continuum of Lifelong Learning
Nuala P. Kenny, MD

A b s t r a c t

Formal instruction in ethical analysis and decision making has become an integral component of both undergraduate and graduate medical education. This inclusion has been made because of the recognition of an increasing complexity of medical science and technology in an increasingly pluralistic and diverse society. Despite the fact that most physicians in practice today have had little or no formal ethics education, there is virtually no regular inclusion of ethics in programs of continuing medical education. This neglect of ongoing personal and professional development in ethical analysis and reflection is all the more significant because of the day-to-day encounters with these issues and dilemmas that characterize modern medical practice. Further, the "hidden curriculum" embedded in the culture of medicine may be more significant in the education and formation of young physicians than any formal ethics education. This hidden curriculum is the lived practice of medicine. This paper reviews the need for a recognition of the centrality of ethics education in the lifelong learning of physicians because of the moral nature of medical practice, the tradition of ethics in medicine, the expectations of patients and families, and physician obligations to the profession itself.

Keywords: Ethics; Hippocratic Oath; moral sensitivity; peer review; tradition; uncertainty
line


Copyright © 1996-2008
JCEHP.com & The Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions
All rights reserved
Disclaimer ·  About This Site ·  Web Editor  · Make JCEHP Your Homepage

Information on this site was last updated: 28 October 2008