Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures, tables and boxes
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Introduction: mapping the territory
- 1 The ethical importance of boundaries to intimacy
- 2 The patient's perspective: impact and treatment
- 3 Teaching ethics and ethical behaviour to medical students
- 4 With the benefit of hindsight: lessons from history
- 5 The prevalence of boundary violations between mental health professionals and their clients
- 6 Psychiatry: responding to the Kerr/Haslam Inquiry
- 7 The general practitioner and abuse in primary care
- 8 Boundaries and boundary violations in psychotherapy
- 9 Sexual therapies: ethical guidelines, vulnerabilities and boundaries
- 10 Obstetrics and gynaecology: a special case?
- 11 Nurses as abusers: a career perspective
- 12 Medical management: governance and sexual boundary issues
- 13 Dealing with offending doctors: sanctions and remediation
- 14 Defending doctors: the protection society's experience
- 15 Regulation and its capacity to minimise abuse by professionals
- 16 The role of the General Medical Council
- Appendix 1 Extract from Vulnerable Patients, Safe Doctors
- Appendix 2 Codes of ethics of psychiatric associations in other countries
- Appendix 3 Guidance from the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence
- Appendix 4 Examples of determinations by the General Medical Council's Fitness to Practise panels
- Appendix 5 Website resources and information
- Index
- Plate section
3 - Teaching ethics and ethical behaviour to medical students
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures, tables and boxes
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Introduction: mapping the territory
- 1 The ethical importance of boundaries to intimacy
- 2 The patient's perspective: impact and treatment
- 3 Teaching ethics and ethical behaviour to medical students
- 4 With the benefit of hindsight: lessons from history
- 5 The prevalence of boundary violations between mental health professionals and their clients
- 6 Psychiatry: responding to the Kerr/Haslam Inquiry
- 7 The general practitioner and abuse in primary care
- 8 Boundaries and boundary violations in psychotherapy
- 9 Sexual therapies: ethical guidelines, vulnerabilities and boundaries
- 10 Obstetrics and gynaecology: a special case?
- 11 Nurses as abusers: a career perspective
- 12 Medical management: governance and sexual boundary issues
- 13 Dealing with offending doctors: sanctions and remediation
- 14 Defending doctors: the protection society's experience
- 15 Regulation and its capacity to minimise abuse by professionals
- 16 The role of the General Medical Council
- Appendix 1 Extract from Vulnerable Patients, Safe Doctors
- Appendix 2 Codes of ethics of psychiatric associations in other countries
- Appendix 3 Guidance from the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence
- Appendix 4 Examples of determinations by the General Medical Council's Fitness to Practise panels
- Appendix 5 Website resources and information
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
Background to the teaching of medical ethics in UK medical schools
It has only been in the past 20 years or so that ethics as a subject in its own right has been formally taught in UK medical schools. Although there had earlier been enthusiasts making the case for the inclusion of formal teaching of ethics and law within the curriculum (see below), a key catalyst for change in the UK was the publication in 1987 of the Pond report (Boyd, 1987), followed in 1993 by Tomorrow's Doctors, published by the General Medical Council (GMC, 1993), which set out in broad terms what was expected of medical schools in the training of medical students. The teaching of medical ethics and the acquiring of appropriate behaviour were specifically mentioned. Since medical schools had to demonstrate that they met the terms of the GMC's requirements, room was made in a crowded syllabus for some ethics teaching. The content of what might be taught emerged through a consensus statement (see Box 3.1). This was revisited under the auspices of the Institute of Medical Ethics (Stirrat et al, 2010). The latest editions of the GMC's Tomorrow's Doctors (2009a) and Medical Students: Professional Values and Fitness to Practise (2009b) will bring about further change to the medical schools’ curriculum.
Box 3.1 Teaching and assessing ethics and law within medical education: a model for the core curriculum
The following 12 topics were identified as core to the teaching and assessment of ethics and law within the medical curriculum in a consensus statement by teachers of medical ethics and law in UK medical schools (Anonymous, 1998):
• Informed consent and refusal of treatment
• The clinical relationship – truthfulness, trust and good communication
• Confidentiality and good clinical practice
• Medical research
• Human reproduction
• The ‘new genetics’
• Children
• Mental disorders and disabilities
• Life, death, dying and killing
• Vulnerabilities created by the duties of doctors and medical students
• Resource allocation
• Rights.
The introduction of medical ethics as a core component of the undergraduate curriculum has not been without opposition. Hope (1998) addressed the three principal reasons behind the resistance.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Abuse of the Doctor-Patient Relationship , pp. 28 - 39Publisher: Royal College of PsychiatristsPrint publication year: 2010