Teaching ethics to medical faculties: An E-learning intervention

Abstract

Introduction: Ethics is defined as a system of moral principles or standards governing conduct; a system of principles by which human actions and proposals may be judged good or bad, right, or wrong. However, ethics for medical teachers with respect to their students has been largely unnoted. Therefore, it seems necessary to know the status of teaching ethics practiced by medical educators which are the major assets in good quality medical education. Objectives: The objectives were to study the changes in the understanding and practices of teaching ethics and principles of medical professionals. Methodology: A prospective interventional study had conducted with 30 medical faculties. Results: Only one-third of the medical educators (33.33%) had reported that they have ever read any literature in “Teaching Ethics,” but after e-intervention, this purport increased to 90.48% as indicated by the posttest results. Conclusion: It could be concluded that faculties were quite aware of the basic philosophy of teaching ethics, but they also agreed with the fact that still, medical teaching is not up to the mark as per the norms of teaching ethics, although most of them were not in agreement of those unethical teaching practices.