Teaching
IBS/Chem 606: Values in Science (VIS)
Since 1992, the Center for Ethics has worked with Emory's basic science research community in meeting requirements for ethics education by offering a course on the responsible conduct of scientific research. This course meets the requirements for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as well as for many other professional research and scientific organizations.
Currently, all first-year PhD students in the Graduate Division of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, and Chemistry take the course. Graduate students from Nursing and other schools and institutions often also participate. New versions of the course for faculty and post-doctoral fellows are in development in 2009.
These courses address a range of issues, such as data management and fraud, research with human and animal subjects, conflicts of interest, and authorship. The VIS courses use real case studies encountered by researchers.
The current one-credit-hour course is offered through the Graduate Division of Biological and Biomedical Sciences and the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Two papers on the course are in the peer-reviewed literature: ‘A model for teaching research ethics’, Sci and Eng Ethics, 10(4):693-704, 2004 (Eisen and Parker) and ‘The absent professor: why we don't teach research ethics and what to do about it’. Am J Bioeth. 2002 Fall;2(4):38-49 (Eisen and Berry).
The course website is http://www.biomed.emory.edu/courses/courses_VIS.cfm. For further information contact Arri Eisen (aeisen@emory.edu).
School of Medicine
MED 755: Clinical Ethics
The Center for Ethics partners with clinical faculty from the School of Medicine in teaching this required third year course for medical students. The overall goal of this course is to introduce future physicians to the knowledge, skills, and moral attentiveness to enable them to carefully consider the ethical challenges that are a regular part of the practice of medicine. Ethics sessions are held in 5 departmental clerkships: Gynecology/Obstetrics, Medicine, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Surgery. Kathy Kinlaw and Dr. Nicolas Krawiecki, Professor of Pediatric Neurology, co-direct this course. The course covers core competencies in clinical ethics and engages students’ own experiences in caring for patients and families. System ethics issues, training issues, and organizational ethics issues are also incorporated in many sessions.
Center for Ethics faculty co-teach each ethics session with clinical Faculty Fellows on-site where students are caring for patients. 2008-2009 Clinical Ethics Faculty Fellows include: Dr. David Bower, Medicine; Dr. Jennifer Goedken, Gynecology/Obstetrics; Dr. Carl Hug, Anesthesiology; Dr. Nicolas Krawiecki, Pediatrics; Dr. Laura Martin, Medicine at Grady; Dr. Kris Reid, Medicine; Dr. Danielle Sara, Gynecology/Obstetrics; Dr. Mark Shumate, Medicine; Dr. Larry Tune, Psychiatry; and Professor Charity Scott, Health Law, Georgia State University.
PA 625: Biomedical Ethics
PA 625 is the medical ethics course presented to physician assistants. Its objectives are to enable students to identify the ways valuative issues, beliefs, and attitudes give rise to ethical dilemmas in health care. By the end of the course, students are expected to be able to demonstrate a keen familiarity with the grammar of medical ethics, especially as that grammar involves notions about autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence and justice. They should be able to analyze ethical dilemmas in terms of the valuative and conceptual or “principled” tensions that precipitate and sustain them. Students should also be able to contemplate and develop remedies for ethical dilemmas in health care that are morally sensitive, legally acceptable, and professionally defensible. Students should be able to apply models of ethical decisionmaking to case studies.
School of Nursing
The Center for Ethics has a long-standing collaborative relationship with the Nell Hodgson School of Nursing working with faculty in the teaching of ethics courses and incorporating ethics within the content of the nursing curriculum. Nursing ethics courses that Center faculty have taught or co-taught include Advanced Practice Nursing: Ethical, Legal, and Leadership Issues (NRSG503) and Health Care Ethics (NRSG708). In addition, Center faculty have been frequent guest lecturers on a variety of ethics-related issues for an number of undergraduate and graduate level nursing courses.
School of Public Health
Ethical, Legal and Social Issues in Responsible Clinical Research (EPI 593) prepares students enrolled in the masters in clinical research program at the School of Public Health to engage in theoretically and practically based discourse and decision making in ethical issues involved in clinical and biomedical research. Students learn to trace the evolution and content of 20th century Western ethical sensibilities and regulatory guidance bearing on clinical research. They will be able to identify significant ethical features of the design of clinical trials, especially as they pertain to the collection, analysis and management of data. Also, they will be able to discuss the ethical dimensions of research participant recruitment, informed consent, authorship and plagiarism. Special topics include ethical issues related to community research, conflicts of interest, and the ethical dimensions of animal experimentation and dual use.
