A process for developing a curriculum in ethics and human values

This article describes the process and results of the deliberations of the group of authors at the 1989 spring meeting of the Northeast Group for Educational Affairs. The participants worked under the premise that someone had given an unlimited amount of money to fund a new medical school. They had to select and define what the educational goals would be and produce a plan to help students reach these goals. There had to be an evaluation process that documented progress toward the stated goals. This paper describes the ethics and human values curriculum, which should be of interest to cancer educators. The knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes are defined and the four-year process of implementing the teaching is described. This curriculum-planning process is applicable to any aspect of cancer education--first defining the outcome, then the evaluation process, and finally, how to get to that outcome.