Invited to do a tutorial on medical ethics for our students – it sounds like asking Franz Kafka to teach in a Sunday school. (Well, apparently our organizer had asked many of my colleagues but was constantly being turned down. Maybe he asked Socrates, Hume, and Schopenhauer.)
I must say I had very little idea what to teach. Surprisingly the students had prepared some cases for discussion, and, towards the latter part of the session, the organizer chipped in and offered several extra scenarios for us to ponder.
And they were illuminating ones too. For example,
- What to do if your senior give you an obviously wrong instruction?
- What to do if you find your senior giving harmful treatment to his patients?
- What to do if your male colleague is suspected to have some inappropriate behaviour to female patients?
Alas, interesting as they appeared, I could not see the value of including these into the medical curriculum. Yes, our doctors-to-be may get a glimpse on some difficulties of practising medicine on earth, but it is merely the romantic idea of some extra-terrestrials that medical students would become better clinicians by teaching of this kind. After all, behaviour is determined by the limbic system, not neocortex.
Maybe they should really ask Schopenhauer.
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