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The Need for a Virtue Ethics Approach to Medical Ethics Education: Focusing on the Learning Objectives of『Medical Ethics』

kim, Soo Jung 1 Junga Kim ORD ID 2

1가톨릭대학교
2가톨릭대학교(성의교정) 인문사회의학연구소

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Two objectives in medical ethics education—“creating virtuous physicians” and “providing a skill set for analyzing and resolving ethical dilemmas”—are often seen as mutually exclusive. However, both objectives are important and they are not as incompatible as they are assumed to be. This article argues that in contemporary medical ethics education the objective of creating virtuous physicians is often underemphasized despite its importance. The learning objective put forward by the Korean Society for Medical Ethics in 2013 also neglects this pedagogical objective and instead adopts a principle-based approach that makes no explicit mention of virtue ethics. After identifying the biases responsible for the omission of virtue-based approaches to medical ethics education, this article offers a critique of those biases as well as strategies for incorporating virtue-based models into the medical curriculum.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.