Pretend that you have been given the responsibility to prepare and teach an ethics course for medical students. Your duty would be to provide the students who are learning how to become doctors with the key ethical issues that they may face as they go out into practice. You must also provide them with the knowledge and tools which they need to make fair ethical decisions and be, themselves, ethical. The goal is for all the medical students under your wing to end up as moral, ethical physicians who are free from misbehavior and who are looked upon with trust by their patients and by their medical colleagues. We are all calling for doctors who are good, do good and are honest and trustworthy to care for us and our families. Now, here is your chance, based on your own experiences, to set down in writing what you are going to instruct them and how they will be able to develop the behavior benchmarks that you are setting for them.
You might say to me, "It's hopeless. Students are either ethical or they are not when they come to medical school. Education is not going to help the one's who are not." Really?
You might say to me, “I am not a physician, philosopher or a teacher..I am only a patient!” Don’t give up on this challenge. The approaches suggested by experienced patients to teaching medical students ethics and ethical behavior may be more constructive and realistic then what is coming from our current medical school teachers. Give it a try. Medical school classes for the first and second year students begin in just a month and we have to get an ethics program started now. Even if you respond after classes begin, we can always change course. Remember, setting the students on the right path is more constructive than later just complaining about them as physicians and mumbling “I hate doctors”. ..Maurice.
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