Abstract

While there are a number of genuine philosophical topics that medical and premedical students can get out of a course on medical ethics, being an ethically sensitive health care worker requires more than knowing a variety of philosophically-interesting medical ethics questions and concepts. In addition, two goals of teaching medical ethics should be to ensure that health care workers have a healthy respect for the rights of their patients and to instill in students the importance of gathering as much information as possible before making decisions that affect the lives of their patients. This paper discusses two methods by which this second goal is achieved, namely by using an in-class exercise and a procedure for delivering exams.