The Ethics Program develops and refines the ethics curriculum for the UT Southwestern Academic Colleges. Since 2009 the Ethics Program has provided developmentally relevant ethics case material to the Colleges curriculum. The Colleges provide an environment where small groups of students work closely with faculty mentors through formal weekly meetings and more informal interactions. The content of these interactions is meant to be closely aligned with the UT Southwestern Medical School curriculum.

During their core clerkships and beyond, students will encounter many common ethical issues that arise in clinical medicine. Ethical dilemmas can evoke powerful emotions and moral distress because they involve judgments about what is right and wrong. Reasonable people can disagree, and people’s judgments can be heavily influenced by their personal and familial values, cultural traditions, and even religious beliefs. Discussions of ethical dilemmas are best when the individuals involved consider the medical facts of the cases; examine the concerns, values, and preferences of the patients and the members of the health care teams; and identify the ethical guidelines at stake to reason through the defensibility of specific actions in the face of them.

Over the course of two years in the clinical years (spring of MS-2 through spring of MS-4), students will meet in combined mentor groups a total of 10 times to have discussions about common ethical dilemmas. Discussions are led by the more senior medical students and will be based on real experiences they had during their clinical rotations. Each student in the more senior group will be assigned one session/topic that they are expected to lead during the calendar year.

The following are topics that serve as the themes for the 10 sessions:

• Competence, Capacity, Consent, Involuntary Admission
• Conflicts of Interest and Duty
• Medical Errors and Disclosure
• Collegial Relationships
• Death and Dying
• Truth Telling
• Confidentiality and Privacy
• Distributive Justice
• Misinformation and Disinformation
• Advocacy

At the conclusion of these sessions, students will be able to: 1) reflect on the personal and professional development they have experienced in the clinical learning environment; 2) identify ethical issues that arise routinely in the care of patients, including what ethical guidelines are at stake; 3) articulate reasons for and against specific decisions that must be made or actions that must be taken in the face of common ethical dilemmas in clinical medicine; and 4) share healthy coping mechanisms for minimizing moral distress in the context of ethical dilemmas in clinical medicine.