Teaching bioethics at (or near) the bedside.

Full Abstract

Many teachers of bioethics often express concern, in their writings and otherwise, about the theoretical basis (or lack of it) of bioethics and the allied issue of relativism. The companion articles by Tong and Momeyer are in this vein and rightly address such issues within the context of a liberal arts education. This article addresses such issues in a different venue, i.e., bioethics teaching in the clinical sphere of health care institutions. It presumes to suggest that many of these theoretical concerns, as well as the threat of relativism, seldom arise in this sphere. Rather, a broad based, well accepted body of moral truth has been fashioned over the last quarter century and it is this that clinical bioethics regularly keys to and to which most moral dilemmas are referred for resolution. The various forms of this pedagogy, e.g., case consultations or institutional policy statements, are charted out in this regard, as well as the often tactical character of much of this teaching, i.e., not "what should we do?", but "how might we best do it?". The article then goes on to conclude with a reflection on the use and abuse of power in clinical bioethics teaching and consultation.

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Author information

Author/s: Wear, Stephen (S);

Affiliation: Center for Clinical Ethics and Humanities in Health Care, The University at Buffalo, VA Medical Center, NY 14215, USA. wear(-atsign-)acsu.buffalo.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comment; Journal Article

Journal: The Journal of medicine and philosophy (J Med Philos), published in Netherlands. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Aug; vol 27 (issue 4) : pp 433-45

Dates: Created 2002/09/10; Completed 2002/10/09; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12221503, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

Comments and Corrections

CommentOn: J Med Philos. 2002 Aug;27(4):403-16. (PMID: 12221501)

CommentOn: J Med Philos. 2002 Aug;27(4):417-32. (PMID: 12221502)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Humans
Philosophy
Teaching

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