Engaging with Experiences of Stigma to Enhance Bioethics Education for Medical Learners

Abstract

It is common to use encounters with individuals who have lived experience of stigma in education activities designed to reduce stigma in healthcare providers. In the sessions described in this chapter, conversations with individuals who have experience of stigma are used to broaden learners’ appreciation of the scope of ethical issues that they will encounter in practice. This chapter explores the relationship between stigma and ethics, and how this applies to teaching in an undergraduate medical curriculum. It draws upon examples of learning activities that center individuals with lived experiences of stigma, describing how the learning activities are structured. It then turns to how these sessions enhance learners’ understanding of bioethics by focusing attention on the microethics involved in healthcare practice while also providing them with an appreciation of structural oppression underlying experiences of stigma and working to build competence in addressing structural challenges in order to fulfill the ethical obligations they have as healthcare providers.