医学教育者の立場から(シンポジウム 医療倫理教育の在り方)

抄録

As a senior medical teacher, I should like to analyze what teaching medical students means to me. There seems to be three fundamental principles in teaching medical students: The first principle is to teach students from the teacher's own knowledge and experiences what is deemed necessary for students, as future medical doctors, to know and understand as basic medical knowledge and techniques, and also to acquire the professional common sense that is needed when dealing with a number of patients and their families in a morally and ethically acceptable manner as future physicians and surgeons. The second teaching principle is to improve up to professionally acceptable levels the incomplete or immature knowledge that students have already obtained during their previous schooling or daily life. At the same time, a teacher has to guide students to acquire the ability to self-learn. However, the principle involved in teaching medical ethics and bioethics to medical students appears to be different from these two teaching principles. This is because ethical analysis of a medical problem provides no single answer due to the different ways that the values involved both in the medical problem and also in the quality of life of a patient may be treated by different people having different viewpoints. It is important to note that no teacher must force students to accept the teacher's personal opinions or viewpoints concerning his own ethical judgements related to any medical problems. A teacher and his / her students should freely exchange their opinions and viewpoints to analyze various aspects involved in a medical problem and learn together to reach some reasonable solutions. This collaborative learning process is vitally important in teaching medical ethics and bioethics to students. It is the third principle in teaching medical students.