The Jay Healey Technique: Teaching Law and Ethics to Medical and Dental Students
Health law and medical ethics are both integral parts of undergraduate medical curricula. The literature has addressed the importance of teaching law and ethics separately in medical school settings, yet there have been few descriptions of teaching law and ethics together in the same curriculum. A combined program in law and ethics required for first-year medical and dental students was developed and implemented by Professor Joseph (Jay) M. Healey, Jr., at the University of Connecticut Schools of Medicine and Dental Medicine from 1975 until his death in 1993. This Article describes the thirty-hour, interactive, case-based course he created. The course, Legal and Ethical Aspects of Medicine and Dental Medicine (LEA), has continued after Jay 's death, and is one of his many legacies to us. LEA consists of fifty-six actual and hypothetical cases written by Jay from which basic legal and ethical principles are extracted by participants and reinforced by instructors.