Placing ethics at the centre of medical training has contributed to the relatively high levels of public trust enjoyed by the medical profession, according to Sir Kenneth Calman.
"Ethics in medicine and science is an important part of medical education and it is very much seen as being integral and not an add-on. It's what doctors do all the time so is at the heart of clinical practice."
Sir Kenneth, chancellor of Glasgow University and former chief medical officer for Scotland, was speaking ahead of a one-day ethics event at the university. Other speakers will include Harry Reid, former editor of The Herald, on media ethics in the wake of the Leveson inquiry, and Professor Stewart Hamilton of IMD, the Lausanne-based business school, on failures in the banking and financial sector.
Sir Kenneth agreed that medicine had much in common with industries such as banking and journalism, including having to take decisions without the full information, but that there were also significant differences.
"It [ethics] is seen within medicine to be very much part of the whole system and the teaching and learning begins early on – 'this is what you will face, this is not something unusual. If you haven't thought about risk, telling the truth and your patients' trust, you have missed the point.' Ethics is fundamental. Every student has a declaration to make at their graduation ceremony - a modern version of the Hippocratic oath. That is right at the beginning and I'm not sure bankers have the same."
The Ethics Colloquium is at Glasgow University on December 4. Tickets cost £95 for the full day or £50 for a half day. To reserve, email Douglas.Mill@glasgow.ac.uk
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