title: A model for faculty development and continuing education in medical ethics: medicine and humanities consultations.
abstract: Despite the significant increase in teaching medical ethics to medical students and residents, little has been done to train teaching faculty and community practicing physicians in medical-ethical decision making. The Medicine and Humanities Consultation Series described here has been a successful model for faculty development in helping practicing physicians with such decision making. The consultations among clinical physicians and humanities scholars were held about every 3 months at an off-campus site to remove the participants from professional intrusions. The 8-hour consultations, conducted informally, addressed social and ethical topics concerning medical practice. Several preselected short articles were distributed to the participants 2 weeks prior to the consultations. Each consultation was led by a visiting guest leader who was sometimes a physician but usually a humanities scholar. This model has been implemented successfully in both Virginia and Texas under very different circumstances. Physicians reported being more comfortable with their ethical decision making--not in terms of what to decide but in terms of how to decide. The consultations enriched the participants' funds of knowledge and their methods of thinking.
authors.affiliation: Department of Humanities in Medicine, Texas A&M University, College Station 77843.
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Self
authors.forename: C L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Koenig
mesh_terms: D003479:Curriculum; D004502:Education, Medical, Continuing; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D005180:Faculty, Medical; D006809:Humanities; D006801:Humans; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication; D013781:Texas