Lessons from a Bygone Medical Ethics Program

2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANONYMOUS

Ethicists in American medical schools feel increasingly discouraged these days. In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, society's enthusiasm for teaching about medical ethics flourished as new medical technologies posed new ethical perplexities. Americans eagerly sought ethics advice and looked to medical schools to provide it. As the sites where many of the new technologies were developed and future physicians were trained, medical schools were the logical place for medical ethicists to work and teach. A few schools recognized society's need and instituted explicit medical ethics teaching—allocating funds, hiring ethicists, creating departments, and trumpeting their accomplishments. But most schools responded to the need with indifference or even hostility. They distrusted outside “experts” and feared a zealous reform movement aimed at the character or practices of modern medicine. Yet even those schools were forced to create ethics programs to meet powerful accreditation requirements adopted around 1990. Complying reluctantly, these schools allocated few personnel and minimal budgets. The resulting programs struggled.

Author(s):  
P. Ravi Shankar

Medical Humanities (MH) provide a contrasting perspective of the arts to the ‘science’ of medicine. A definition of MH agreed upon by all workers is lacking. There are a number of advantages of teaching MH to medical students. MH programs are common in medical schools in developed nations. In developing nations these are not common and in the chapter the author describes programs in Brazil, Turkey, Argentina and Nepal. The relationship between medical ethics and MH is the subject of debate. Medical ethics teaching appears to be commoner compared to MH in medical schools. MH programs are not common in Asia and there are many challenges to MH teaching. Patient and illness narratives are become commoner in medical education. The author has conducted MH programs in two Nepalese medical schools and shares his experiences.


2016 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine L. Carroll

In the late nineteenth century, the American system of medical education underwent a complete transformation. Medical colleges shifted from commercial schools where instruction was based almost exclusively on classroom lectures to university-affiliated programs providing hands-on training in both laboratory and clinical work. Medical educators recognized that successfully enacting the new pedagogy required new buildings. By the 1930s, almost every medical college in the United States had rebuilt or significantly renovated its facilities. In Creating the Modern Physician: The Architecture of American Medical Schools in the Era of Medical Education Reform, Katherine L. Carroll analyzes the first wave of schools constructed to house the new medical training. She examines the three dominant types of American medical school buildings, which she argues did more than supply spaces for teaching and research—they defined specific conceptions of modern medicine and helped to shape the modern physician.


2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 470-473
Author(s):  
JOHN MCMILLAN ◽  
PHILLIPA MALPAS ◽  
SIMON WALKER ◽  
MONIQUE JONAS

Abstract:This article describes the well-developed and long-standing medical ethics teaching programs in both of New Zealand’s medical schools at the University of Otago and the University of Auckland. The programs reflect the awareness that has been increasing as to the important role that ethics education plays in contributing to the “professionalism” and “professional development” in medical curricula.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
Luciana Da Silveira Cavalcante ◽  
Shannon N. Tessier

Heart transplantation became a reality at the end of the 1960s as a life-saving option for patients with end-stage heart failure. Static cold storage (SCS) at 4–6 °C has remained the standard for heart preservation for decades. However, SCS only allows for short-term storage that precludes optimal matching programs, requires emergency surgeries, and results in the unnecessary discard of organs. Among the alternatives seeking to extend ex vivo lifespan and mitigate the shortage of organs are sub-zero or machine perfusion modalities. Sub-zero approaches aim to prolong cold ischemia tolerance by deepening metabolic stasis, while machine perfusion aims to support metabolism through the continuous delivery of oxygen and nutrients. Each of these approaches hold promise; however, complex barriers must be overcome before their potential can be fully realized. We suggest that one barrier facing all experimental efforts to extend ex vivo lifespan are limited research tools. Mammalian models are usually the first choice due to translational aspects, yet experimentation can be restricted by expertise, time, and resources. Instead, there are instances when smaller vertebrate models, like the zebrafish, could fill critical experimental gaps in the field. Taken together, this review provides a summary of the current gold standard for heart preservation as well as new technologies in ex vivo lifespan extension. Furthermore, we describe how existing tools in zebrafish research, including isolated organ, cell specific and functional assays, as well as molecular tools, could complement and elevate heart preservation research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-117
Author(s):  
Christian Henrich-Franke

Abstract The second half of the 20th century is commonly considered to be a time in which German companies lost their innovative strength, while promising new technologies presented an enormous potential for innovation in the US. The fact that German companies were quite successful in the production of medium data technology and had considerable influence on the development of electronic data processing was neglected by business and media historians alike until now. The article analyses the Siemag Feinmechanische Werke (Eiserfeld) as one of the most important producers of the predecessors to said medium data technologies in the 1950s and 1960s. Two transformation processes regarding the media – from mechanic to semiconductor and from semiconductor to all-electronic technology – are highlighted in particular. It poses the question of how and why a middling family enterprise such as Siemag was able to rise to being the leading provider for medium data processing office computers despite lacking expertise in the field of electrical engineering while also facing difficult location conditions. The article shows that Siemag successfully turned from its roots in heavy industry towards the production of innovative high technology devices. This development stems from the company’s strategic decisions. As long as their products were not mass-produced, a medium-sized family business like Siemag could hold its own on the market through clever decision-making which relied on flexible specialization, targeted license and patent cooperation as well as innovative products, even in the face of adverse conditions. Only in the second half of the 1960s, as profit margins dropped due to increasing sales figures and office machines had finally transformed into office computers, Siemag was forced to enter cooperation with Philips in order to broaden its spectrum and merge the production site in Eiserfeld into a larger business complex.


2021 ◽  
pp. 155982762110081
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Trilk ◽  
Shannon Worthman ◽  
Paulina Shetty ◽  
Karen R. Studer ◽  
April Wilson ◽  
...  

Lifestyle medicine (LM) is an emerging specialty that is gaining momentum and support from around the world. The American Medical Association passed a resolution to support incorporating LM curricula in medical schools in 2017. Since then, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine Undergraduate Medical Education Task Force has created a framework for incorporating LM into medical school curricula. This article provides competencies for medical school LM curriculum implementation and illustrates how they relate to the Association of American Medical College’s Core Entrustable Professional Activities and the LM Certification Competencies from the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine. Finally, standards are presented for how medical schools may receive certification for integrating LM into their curriculum and how medical students can work toward becoming board certified in LM through an educational pathway.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhuo Zhao ◽  
Rui Li ◽  
Yangmyung Ma ◽  
Iman Islam ◽  
Abdul M. Azam Rajper ◽  
...  

UNSTRUCTURED During COVID-19, the clinical and healthcare demands have been on the rapid rise. Major challenges to addressing the pandemic include a lack of testing kits and shortages of ventilators to treat severe cases of COVID-19, insufficient accessibility to personal protective equipment for both hospitals and the public. New technologies have been developed by scientists, researchers, and companies in response to these demands. In this paper, 90 news articles and scientific reports on COVID-19-related innovations during 2020-2021 were screened and shortlisted to form a pool of candidates yielding a total of 20 publications for review which were then categorized into three sections: personal protective equipment, testing methods, and medical treatments. Each study was analyzed for its engineering characteristics and potential social impact on the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the guidelines for future disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment were summarized and discussed.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147-159
Author(s):  
Nataliya G. Surovtseva ◽  

The article deals with the history of the creation and activity of the Documentalistics Commission which functioned between the 1960s and 1980s under the Scientific Council on the Complex Problem of Cybernetics. The Commission’s activities are related to the formation of documentalistics as an independent scientific discipline, its object is presented by large documentary systems, the use of new technologies in the processes of collecting, processing, searching, storing and using information. The author focuses on the transformation of the Commission’s research directions throughout the entire period of its existence. In the first years of the Commission’s work, the issues of the information classification and the use of new technological solutions in working with documents (punch cards and microphotoreproduction) were prevalent. The heyday of the Commission’s activities is associated with the work on the creation of the unified documentation systems and all-Union classifiers of information for the automated control systems. The interdisciplinary nature of the Commission’s activities influenced the subject of documentalistics and the organizational form of its existence. Despite the fact that by the end of the 1980s the Documentalistics Commission had virtually ceased to exist, documentalistics as a scientific direction had a huge impact on the development of records management and archival studies in Russia.


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