Structuring bioethics education: The question, the disciplines, and the integrative challenge

Abstract

This paper introduces and recommends a particular approach to the structuring of courses of bioethics education, an approach that has the merits of being both relevant to a wider nonprofessional audience and readily applicable to the circumstances in which ordinary people are called upon to make bioethical decisions. As an explanatory preamble, the first part of this paper analyzes the process of a notable ethics committee as it addressed the topic of medical futility. This paper draws attention to the merits of the committee’s structuring a response to its complex bioethical challenge in a particular interdisciplinary fashion. The next section of this paper then applies lessons from the analysis of the ethics committee process to the field of ethics education more generally, and attention is given to the practicalities of ethics course design and implementation. The educational functions of a central question, discrete disciplinary elements, and culminating interdisciplinary integration are explained. An illustrative example of one ethics course designed according to the suggestions of this paper is presented. The paper ends by indicating the merits of this approach to bioethics education, given the current cultural circumstances.