Ethics

The Division of General Internal Medicine offers several opportunities for fellows to engage in meaningful discussion about ethics topics.

Biomedical Ethics Journal Club

The Journal Club meets once a month. Its goals are to foster interest in and knowledge of key topics in biomedical ethics, and to provide an open forum for discussion of issues related to clinical research ethics in an interdisciplinary environment.

Seminar in the Ethical and Legal Issues in Clinical Research

(in development). Specifically designed for clinical researchers, this course will fulfill the ethics requirements for T32 grants and other NIH training grants. Topics to be covered include: informed consent, confidentiality and privacy, conflicts of interest, the proper gathering, interpretation and retention of data, plagiarism, scientific misconduct, guidelines for responsibly determining authorship, issues in genetic research, the allocation of scarce medical resources, cross-cultural issues, "end of life" concerns, and legal and regulatory matters.

House Staff Curriculum in Clinical Medical Ethics

Sponsored by the Department of Internal Medicine and the Program in Biomedical Ethics, physician-ethicist Lauris Kaldjian, MD directs a series of monthly noontime conferences in clinical ethics. He is currently assisted by co-director Robert Canady, MD, resident in internal medicine. These sessions are case-based, interactive, and accompanied by didactic presentations. Topics pertain to broad issues in clinical medical ethics and are oriented to the practical realities faced by physicians-in-training. Topics covered thus far include end-of-life issues, futility, ethics in clinical education, treatment refusal, persistent vegetative state, and physician impairment. House staff are encouraged to suggest additional topics and to present patient cases from their own experience in order to make these conferences as current and relevant as possible.