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Bioethics Forum Essay

Just Published Hastings Center Report Highlights “Teaching Bioethics”

The topic “teaching bioethics” is highlighted and explored in the newly published issue of theHastings Center Report, which contains a set of essays developed collaboratively by the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues and The Hastings Center. The set’s introductory essay acknowledges that basic bioethics literacy and training lag. But what are the best educational practices to prepare our scientists, health care providers – even those of us who are not in science or healthcare – who will most assuredly wrestle with bioethical issues at some point in our careers or our family lives?

The Bioethics Commission has made several recommendations since 2010 to improve bioethics education in the science and health professions, and The Hastings Center has also made bioethics education one of its strategic priorities.  The collection of papers in the Sept.-Oct. issue of theReportand to be published across several future issues highlights the current status of best practices in bioethics education, describes the gaps that exist, and suggests approaches to fill them.  Mildred Solomon, EdD, president and CEO of The Hastings Center, and Lisa M. Lee, PhD, MS, executive director of the Bioethics Commission, served as guest editors for the issue.

Last fall, the Bioethics Commission and the Center invited papers on several broad topics including: assessing the state of bioethics education (What work has been done? How do we evaluate it? What are potential measures? What is the research agenda?); incorporating professional, clinical, research, and public health ethics education into medical and STEM education at secondary, undergraduate, and graduate levels; methods for bioethics instruction (casuistry, decision-making frameworks, pedagogical innovations, interpreting the role of history); and best practices in bioethics education.

We encouraged manuscripts from individuals teaching in traditional and nontraditional settings and we received more than 80 manuscripts.  With such an impressive response and with the need to stimulate work in this area so great, we are pleased that this Sept.-Oct. set of papers is just the beginning.  The Report will publish a bioethics education essay in each of its issues throughout 2015.

“The papers… are meant to serve as a starting point for further reflection, writing, and debate,” Lee, Solomon, and Amy Gutmann, Ph.D., Chair of the Bioethics Commission, wrote in the set’s introductory essay.

To keep this conversation going Solomon and Lee will also offer a special session at the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities 16th Annual Meeting in San Diego on Friday October 17: “Bioethics Literacy Across the Lifespan.” They will describe transformative learning as an approach to ethics education in science technology, engineering, and mathematics and outline research needs for the development of evidence-based pedagogy.

“Developing and sharing a body of literature on best practices of teaching bioethics, and continuing the conversation at key conferences are two important steps in developing a community of practice.  Ideally there will someday exist an online forum in which traditional and nontraditional educators across disciplines can share best practices, course materials, and other helpful information with one another,” Lee said.

In addition to working with The Hastings Center to produce this set of essays, the bioethics commission has committed to developing its own set of pedagogical materials, based on its contemporary analysis and its reports, to further support bioethics education.  The materials can be found at www.bioethics.gov/education.

Comments on the set of essays in the Report, thoughts on the need for bioethics literacy, or feedback about the Bioethics Commission’s pedagogical materials are welcome at education@bioethics.gov.

Hillary Wicai Viers is the director of communications of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

Posted by Susan Gilbert at 09/17/2014 03:21:58 PM |

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