CLIME Conversation Cafe: Ethics in Medicine, New Problems & New Methods
Gina Campelia, PhD, HEC-C (She/They)
Dr. Campelia (she/they) is an associate professor in the Department of Bioethics & Humanities at the University of Washington School of Medicine and a consultant for UW Medicine’s Ethics Consultation Service. She joined the Department of Bioethics & Humanities in October 2016 and received her PhD in Philosophy at the Graduate Center, CUNY, under the supervision of Virginia Held. Recent publications concentrate on critical theory and oppression in healthcare, relationality, empathy, epistemology and feminist ethics. Dr. Campelia’s research generally attends to care ethics, feminist ethics and virtue ethics in the clinical setting, with a special focus on the intersection between clinical ethics and axes of oppression.
Ethics content in undergraduate medical curriculum has a long history grounded in the four principles of biomedical ethics: respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. These principles are useful and important, but are not representative of the value systems that clinicians, patients and families bring into the clinical setting. The four principles are also over 50 years old and have faced a multitude of criticisms for inadequate attention to justice and oppression, which has only been amplified in the COVID-19 pandemic.
This Conversation Café explored some innovations in ethics curriculum for medical students that have been implemented at UWSOM and open discussion about what should be prioritized in ethics curriculum in undergraduate medical education going forward