The teaching of medical ethics

Students at Newcastle are exposed to patients during their first week at medical school and attached to a family within the first month. The object is to sensitise them to patients as people rather than vehicles of disease. Medical ethics is introduced as part of the multidisciplinary Human Development, Behaviour and Ageing Course by a lecturer who shows a film which poses an ethical problem. At subsequent tutorials led by the Department of Family and Community Medicine's general practitioner lecturers the subject is discussed as ethical issues arise in the course of their work.