Leadership through ethics: preliminary assessment of an innovative medical ethics education program

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CE-RESEARCH LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Leadership through ethics: preliminary assessment of an innovative medical ethics education program Lauren East1   · Mikalyn Taylor Defoor1   · Paul Christopher Mann2,3   · Richard Woodville Sams2,4 Received: 16 June 2020 / Accepted: 17 September 2020 © Società Italiana di Medicina Interna (SIMI) 2020

Dear Editor, Leadership Through Ethics (LTE) was founded at the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) in 2015 to address a perceived need at our institution for more structured medical ethics education amongst medical students. LTE, a peerdriven grassroots medical ethics curriculum described in depth by Sullivan et al., sought to enhance medical ethics teaching for interested medical students through a 4-year interactive medical ethics curriculum, aligning with medical school, that includes the following components: lunch-andlearn didactic sessions, peer-facilitated ethics presentations, faculty–student mentorship sessions, students ethics committee discussions, hospital ethics committee and pastoral care shadowing, and an ethics capstone scholarly project [1]. DeFoor et al. recently demonstrated an interest in further medical ethics training at our institution by future physicians, nursing professionals, and physical therapists [2]. Inspired by the LTE program and interest in further medical ethics education, clinical instructors launched a graduate-level medical ethics certificate program based on the student-developed LTE curriculum and offered this in an interprofessional setting.

Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (https​://doi.org/10.1007/s1173​9-020-02513​-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Lauren East [email protected] 1



Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, Augusta, GA, USA

2



Center for Bioethics and Health Policy, Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, Augusta, GA, USA

3

Pediatrics: Division of Neonatology, Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, Augusta, GA, USA

4

Department of Family Medicine, Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, Augusta, GA, USA



Because there is a lack of consensus as to the best pedagogical approach to teach medical ethics, appropriate evaluation of such a novel program is important, especially one with an associated certificate program [3]. Furthermore, although recent medical ethics education literature draws attention to informal ethics teaching with peer-group discussions, teaching from everyday clinical practice, and conversation and collaboration among trainees, assessment-based outcome measures are sparse in the literature evaluating the success of this informal ethics discourse teaching style [4]. This preliminary investigation aims to confirm the ongoing perceived efficacy and current student satisfaction with the LTE program, which was previously described in depth by Sullivan et al. [1]. Initial student feedback from the inaugural class (2015–2016) in their transition to clerkship years was positive, but t