Practical tips for teaching ethics and humanism to medical students

This article presents the results of a decade's experiment in creating a longitudinal ethics and humanism curriculum for the core clinical year at UNC School of Medicine, North Carolina, United States. This curriculum applies published research on best practices in medical ethics education. Sample comments from course evaluations of the students who have completed this curriculum provide support for its success at achieving its desired learning outcomes. To create a similar ethics curriculum in the core clinical year at other medical schools, there are twelve practical tips:  preparation: read the research on the ethical challenges for medical students; recruit an interdisciplinary teaching team; create cohorts for this aspect of the curriculum that will stay together for the year; grade only with pass/fail; have the students bring the cases from their clinical experiences; feed them if possible, and structure the time together carefully. Use a narrative ethics methodology and introduce alternative methods for student writing and group process. Connect students with literature in medical humanities and bioethics and encourage publication of their narratives. As with any good creation, the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and each campus can adapt these guidelines for their people and programs.