Why Pre-Health Students Must Prioritize Learning Medical Ethics
Working through ethical dilemmas is part of the nature of working in a healthcare setting. It is possible you may be thinking that you will be able to easily navigate the waters of ethical decision making when the time comes for you to face it in your workplace, but we encourage you to become educated on ethical practices now, as an undergraduate pre-health student. In practice, making ethical decisions while lives are at stake is incredibly difficult, and you will not always be able to consult a policy expert before making medical decisions.
Why Learning Medical Ethics Is Essential for Future Healthcare Practitioners
Dr. Bruce Glymour, K-State Philosophy Department Head, stressed that “failing to engage seriously with medical ethics means making preventable mistakes with real consequences.”
Dr. Nathan Kellen, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department, expanded on this to say, “ethics will teach you that a lot of the worst tragedies in medical ethics happen not from people who are explicitly evil, but people who are not paying enough attention and participate in systemic tragedies that go on for decades and centuries, and they don’t know it. They might have good intentions and aren’t looking to do evil, but they are participating nonetheless, and people get hurt.”
Most people who pursue careers in healthcare do so because they genuinely care about the wellbeing of individuals in their community and want to help people heal. Usually, practitioners do not intend to cause harm, but part of the responsibility of healthcare involves engaging with ethics so you understand how decisions impact individual welfare and systemic issues.
Ethics and Healthcare Disparities: A Real-World Concern
The way that healthcare practitioners do or do not engage in ethical decision-making has a significant impact on how racial, gender, and socioeconomic disparities in healthcare are perpetuated. One of the AMA Principles of Medical Ethics is, “A physician shall support access to medical care for all people” (AMA Code of Medical Ethics). For this reason, it is critical for healthcare practitioners to engage in learning about unconscious bias, social determinants of health, historical injustices in medicine, and how healthcare payment models affect access.
As was previously stated, good intentions are often not enough to make ethical professional decisions—systemic tragedies can continue for years when medical professionals are not paying enough attention.
Navigating Complex Decision-Making in Medicine
Many pre-health students assume that most ethical dilemmas will have clear answers or that hospital policies will always indicate what to do. In reality, healthcare practitioners commonly face difficult ethical dilemmas and "are expected to use skills of ethical discernment and reflection to determine how best to adhere to the goals and spirit of guidance when it cannot be upheld strictly as written” (AMA Code of Medical Ethics).
If the code of medical ethics itself acknowledges that healthcare professionals are going to have to use ethical discernment in their decision-making and that their guidance is not a cover-all, then you know that ethical decision-making is often ambiguous.
Each of the ethics scenarios below represents countless potential individual situations that each have their own considerations. More importantly, each of those individual situations represents human lives.
- Right to Healthcare: How should you interact with a profit-model of healthcare?
- The Business of Medicine: How should you interact with pharmaceutical influences on healthcare practices?
- Triage: What should you do when you can’t save everyone? How should treatment resources be distributed?
- Informed Consent: How do you determine the line where individuals can or cannot give their own informed consent for healthcare decisions?
- Government Restrictions: What should you do when a treatment is medically necessary but legally restricted?
- Hierarchical Dynamics: How should medical professionals of different “statuses” interact with each other?
- Conscientious Objection: What should you do when you are tasked with carrying out policies you don’t agree with? What do you do as someone who is not responsible for the policy?
Developing a Critical Thinking Perspective
Working in healthcare is an inherently political and socially impacted job. Standard operating procedures are not the same now as they have been in the past, and they are not the same now as they will be in the future. Healthcare practitioners have a responsibility to educate themselves and inform future policy and practices that will impact their patients.
Dr. Stephanie Hoffman, Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, encourages students to "be critical of the institution where you learned everything, the hospital you are at, and your textbooks. There is no reason not to be critical of those things.”
Critically thinking about your education and healthcare policy will help you to identify areas of practice that can be improved. Dr. Glymour emphasized that the AMA ethical guidelines are shaped by current practitioners and are subject to change. In fact, the code of ethics says, “A physician shall respect the law and also recognize a responsibility to seek changes in those requirements which are contrary to the best interests of the patient” (AMA Code of Medical Ethics).
How to Prepare for Ethical Decision Making in Your Career
In order for positive changes to happen for the betterment of patients, and for patients to receive equitable and just care, we need to be awake to the realities of medical ethics. In a world where healthcare professionals need to take patient values, changing policies, and medical realities into account when making decisions, Dr. Glymour gives pre-health students this warning:
“Don’t throw your moral fate to the winds!”
There are many ways you can proactively prepare for ethical decision making in your career, including many options here at K-State.
Courses:
- PHILO 365: Medical Ethics
- This course will help you apply moral and ethical theory to real-world medical dilemmas. Students will gain a mental toolbox for making ethical decisions in a healthcare setting.
- This class can also help students better understand how to answer ethical questions in a professional school interview setting.
- PHILO 380: Philosophy of Race
- PHILO 565: Advanced Medical Ethics
Academic Programs:
- Major in Philosophy
- Minor in Philosophy (class selections can be predominately medical ethics-related)
- Certificate in Healthcare Policy (mixture of political science, economics, and philosophy courses)
- Microcredential in Medical Ethics (3 courses required)
- Independent Study in Philosophy (for students who want to do a deep dive into a particular topic)
Additional Opportunities:
- Philosophy Department speaker series
- Read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
- Tea with the Philosophy Department- every Thursday at 3:30pm in 201 Dickens Hall
- Attend tea on Thursdays to interact with philosophy department professors and ask them questions about ethics
**Special thanks to Dr. Glymour, Dr. Kellen, and Dr. Hoffman for contributing to this blog.