Medical Ethics Education: Past, Present, and Future

TLDR

Jurisprudence is increasingly taught in medical schools because it equips physicians to practice medicine, collaborate with lawyers, and engage in public health discourse, and it clarifies shared methods of law and medicine, making it essential despite resource constraints. The curricula aim to enhance physicians’ clinical, institutional, and public effectiveness, guided by sound pedagogy and informed answers to key questions about content, timing, delivery, instructors, and evaluation. Curriculum design prioritizes skill and attitude development over doctrinal facts, tailoring to learners’ intellectual styles, integrating courses with the broader curriculum, building on shared medicine‑law features, and ensuring coherence and continuity. Empirical studies over the past 30 years reveal changing patterns in the frequency and focus of jurisprudence teaching, offering guidance for contemporary curriculum development.

Abstract

The study of jurisprudence--law, legal reasoning, and the legal system--has become progressively more common in medical school curricula. Familiarity with jurisprudence helps physicians practice medicine well, collaborate productively with lawyers, and be more effective in public discourse about health care delivery. Moreover, the study of jurisprudence can help physicians polish the methods and clarify the purposes common to law and medicine. Empirical studies over the last 30 years demonstrate patterns of change in the frequency and focus of jurisprudence teaching in medical school curricula that can guide contemporary efforts to devise or refine curricula in medical jurisprudence. The general goal of such curricula should be to enhance physicians' clinical, institutional, and public effectiveness. These curricula should adhere to principles of sound pedagogy and be based on informed answers to the central questions of what should be taught, when, how, and by whom, and how the curriculum should be evaluated. Developing skills and changing attitudes are more important than imparting information about particular doctrines and laws. Curriculum planners should take into account the intellectual styles of the learners; integrate, not just coordinate, the new courses with the rest of the curriculum; build on features that medicine and law share and where they collaborate; and ensure intra- and inter-curricular coherence and continuity. Even though limitations of time, people, and money and differences in educational goals will influence what, when, and how medical jurisprudence is taught, the effort should be made if physicians are to be better empowered to use the law and their law colleagues to serve patients and promote public welfare.