Medical Students Say "Where's the Ethics?"
Writes Katherine Mangan of the new survey detailed in the Chronicle of Higher Education and published on the website of the American Medical Student Association:More...more than one third said medical ethics was missing from their required curriculum...than one-third of the nation's medical students responding to a recent survey said medical ethics was missing from their required curricula, and less than half were aware of courses that covered bioterrorism or disaster preparedness, according to a report released on Monday by the American Medical Student Association.The Association of American Medical Colleges, which represents the nation's 125 accredited medical schools, challenged the findings, pointing out that the responses had come from less than 1 percent of the nation's 67,000 medical students.
The medical-college association's own survey of medical schools found that 124 of the institutions covered ethics in at least one required course in the 2003-4 academic year, the latest year for which data are available, and that required courses at 97 schools covered alternative or complementary medicine.
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Yes, the results seem interesting at first glance, but it's worth noting that the online survey in question relied on a self-selected, non-scientific sample. Making matters worse, the total number of student responses was only 322. (N.B., there are 120 medical schools in the U.S.). The data reveals nothing about how much medical ethics med students are receiving, but it's very clear that the leaders of the American Medical Student Association haven't gotten nearly enough instruction on identifying poor study design and meaningless data.
- by J. Schwartz on Aug 24, 2005 at 2:21 AM | link