Teaching medical ethics Talking about cases in bioethics: the eVect of an intensive course on health care professionals

Educational eVorts in bioethics are prevalent, but little is known about their eYcacy. Although previous work indicates that courses in bioethics have a demonstrable eVect on medical students, it has not examined their eVect on health care professionals. In this report, we describe a study designed to investigate the eVect of bioethics education on health care professionals. At the Intensive Bioethics Course, a six-day course held annually at Georgetown University, we administered a questionnaire requiring open-ended responses to vignettes both before and after the course. Following the course, respondents defended their responses more carefully and articulated their thoughts more clearly. In addition, after the course respondents seemed to have a more subtle understanding of the relevant issues in the cases and applied theory to these cases more frequently. These findings help to formulate an understanding of the eVect of bioethics education on health care professionals. (Journal of Medical Ethics 2000;26:131–136)