FSU-Tallahassee

The “Teaching Humanistic Risk Management and Ethical Principles” workshop gets its relevance and importance as part of the norms of professionalism physicians already possess and that guide their practice. Professionals have little opportunity, however, to reflect on what they believe or what they do related to teaching students about risk management and the ethical principles they use in practice. Without reflection, they can find themselves uncertain if they are acting out of their own best professional judgment, according hospital policy, or office routine. Worse still, they can lose sight of their own values altogether. Even if they are explicitly aware of moral and ethical principles, they may not know how to put them to work in thinking about complicated, unsettling, or puzzling moral and ethical dilemmas, or how to teach students about these situations. To reflect on their practice and their teaching of medical students, clinician educators need to (a) be aware of their own professional norms and values; (b) be able to express them to their colleagues, patients and patient families, (c) through critical reflection and discussion work together with others to provide optimal and ethically responsible care, and (d) to initiate changes, where needed. Based on the discovery model of education, the program draws on tested approaches to create a learning forum for shared problem-solving and support from among a diverse group of practitioners. Four cases drawn from real-life situations have been developed for discussion among clinical educators who attend this workshop to help them explore, understand, and anticipate their thinking, reactions, and explanations for their actions, and what and how they would teach their students.