E-casebook on medical ethics to be launched
SINGAPORE — A 74-year-old woman refuses to undergo surgery to fix a broken hip while her children, a daughter and a son, who lives overseas, argue over the type of treatment and care their mother should receive. Meanwhile, the old woman’s condition is getting worse.
SINGAPORE — A 74-year-old woman refuses to undergo surgery to fix a broken hip while her children, a daughter and a son, who lives overseas, argue over the type of treatment and care their mother should receive. Meanwhile, the old woman’s condition is getting worse.
Caught in the middle is the healthcare team who must address the children’s concerns and resolve the conflict in the most ethical way.
The case illustrates one of the many ethical challenges doctors face, and an online guide intends to highlight such cases to help healthcare professionals better understand key ethical situations.
Titled Making Difficult Decisions With Patients and Families: A Singapore Casebook, it is a collaboration between the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Hastings Center in New York and Ethox Centre at the University of Oxford.
Funded by the Lien Foundation, the book has been designed to promote learning, teaching and discussion among healthcare professionals on some of the most complex, yet common, issues they face.
Speaking at a media briefing yesterday, contributors to the book said they had noticed a gap in the education of medical ethics in their practice.
Dr Peter Loke, Family Medicine Practitioner at Mint Medical Centre, said as a young doctor, he could barely find resources on the subject.
Associate Professor Gerald Koh from the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health said: “In medical school, ethics were just taught maybe in a one-hour lecture for five years. When you enter the workforce and you start becoming a doctor on the ground and start dealing with all these really complicated cases … you ask what is the law? I don’t remember it.”
Prof Koh, however, noted that great strides had been made over the last 10 years after the issue of ethics was incorporated into the medical curriculum to better equip healthcare practitioners.
Dr Tan Poh Lin, Senior Consultant at the Paediatric Haematology and Oncology division at the National University Hospital, said although there are no answers or formulas in the book, the guide prompts discussion and serves as a resource which resident doctors would probably find useful.
When asked if institutions dedicate enough time to teaching medical ethics today, Dr Jacqueline Chin, who is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics, said the school places a strong emphasis on ethics and professionalism in its curriculum.
Currently, undergraduate medical students at NUS take medical ethics modules under its Health Ethics, Law and Professionalism programme for five years.
For instance, first-year students attend 27 hours of lectures and tutorials on topics such as organ transplant and genomic medicine.
Dr Chin, who is also the editor-in-chief of the book, added that while the guide is beneficial to undergraduates, it will also help busy professionals who need information to help them handle difficult situations.
The online book, which will be officially launched on Jan 19, can be accessed by the public for free. It will also be used as a teaching resource by healthcare professionals.