Inventory Cambridge Consortium Working Groups 2018: Turkey Working Group


Işil Ülman F. Y.

8th Cambridge Consortium of Bioethics Education, Paris, Fransa, 04 Temmuz 2018 - 06 Şubat 2020, ss.1

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
  • Basıldığı Şehir: Paris
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Fransa
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1
  • Acıbadem Mehmet Ali Aydınlar Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

8th Cambridge Consortium of Bioethics Education, Paris- France, 4-6 July 2018, by Prof. Yesim Isil Ulman, PhD


 

Inventory Cambridge Consortium Working Groups 2018: Turkey Working Group

Personal information

Name: Yesim Isil Ulman ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Country: Turkey...........................................................................................................

Function: Representative / Member .....................................................................................................................

E-mail address: yesimul@yahoo.com.....................................................................................

Member of the Cambridge Consortium since: 15 members since its establishment in 2012..............................................................................................................

Characteristics of the working group members

Number of members: Fifteen members.......................................................................................................

Function/occupation of members: Bioethics (Yesim Isil Ulman, M. Volkan Kavas, Muhtar Çokar (+Free Lance NGO Activist), Gülsüm Önal (+NGO Activist), Fatih Artvinli, Murat Aksu, Vedat Yıldırım), Public Health (Nadi Bakırcı, Figen Demir), Sociology (İnci User), Family Medicine (Pınar Topsever), Medical Education (Kevser Vatansever [+Public Health], Melike Şahiner [+Physiology]), Forensic Medicine (Işıl Pakiş), Neuroscience (Tuna Çakar). .....................................................................................................................

Characteristics of the working grou p

Names of universities involved: Acibadem University (Istanbul), Ankara University, Baskent University (Ankara), MEF University (Istanbul), Ege University (Izmir), Aydin University (Istanbul).......................................................................................................

Number of universities with a medical faculty in your country: 84 (according to the 2017 statistics).......................................................................................................

Number of meetings per year: Once a year...............................................................................................................

Foundation of working group (year): 2012..............................................................................................................

National framework

Are there national agreements considering medical ethics and/or bioethics education? If so can you describe them briefly with the emphasis on the implications of the agreements on ethics education?

The most comprehensive national agreement comprising all universities including the medical ethics and bioethics education in Turkey is National Medical Education Core Programme (2014).

The Programme noted that:

·       Ethics is one of the core competencies in undergraduate medical education

·       Professional ethics principles and values should be more integrated in clinical medicine and procedural skills curricula.

·       List of Basic Medical Practice should comprise ethical conduct, normative system knowledge, basic concepts of medical ethics, ethical theories, principles of medical ethics.

The Programme agreed that:

·       The process of patient and disease management, including diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation and prevention, should be planned and conducted through ethical principles and values in a cost effective way.

·       Health care management should be planned and conducted through ethical principles and values in a cost effective way.

Post graduate Medical Education National Competencies Framework contains:

·       Development of physician’s professional identity within the scope of history of medicine and history of thoughts and values; Observance of ethical and professional values; Monitoring the ethical conduct in all processes and practices regarding healthcare; Fighting against all cases and circumstances violating professionalism and ethics.

Basic Clinical Practices also includes ethical decision making and problem solving [1].

[Source 1: Ulusal Çekirdek Eğitim Programı (National Medical Education Core Programme in Turkey) http://tip.bezmialem.edu.tr/tr/Documents/ulusalcep2014.pdf (Accessed 27.06.2018)]

Activities of the working group

What is the central aim of the working group? Give a short description.

The aims of the Group are to raise awareness in ethics education and moral decision making in academic and in clinical setting; to work multi-professionally in coordination with other healthcare professionals; to enhance advocacy of ethics teaching at universities; to follow humanities perspective; to share ideas on curriculum development; to compare and learn mutually from the combined experiences; to choose topics for discussion on issues of bioethics and society; to structure multi-based research among countries [2].

[Source 2: Ulman et al, “Cambridge Consortium of Bioethics Education Turkey Working Group”, Turkish Journal of Bioethics, 2014; 1(4): 184-187]

What are the main activities of the working group?

The Cambridge Turkey Working Group began to act by organizing workshops to develop its aims and strategies. The Group is mostly benefiting from the task group working methodology.

The Turkey Working Group has opened a specific website  to facilitate the cooperation and sharing of information by recording its activities as well. At its second workshop (in December 2013), the Group proposed that bioethics be part of overall academic curricula both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Such a curriculum should include both contemporary international syllabi on the ethics of health sciences, as well as issues of interdisciplinary methodology in bioethics and health law. The Group introduced itself to the academic audience by an oral presentation at the 2nd Conference of International Association of Ethics Education (IAEE) in Ankara 2014.

The Cambridge Bioethics Education Turkey Working Group conducted its 3rd Workshop on the theme of the "Can ethics be taught?" in order to discuss the methodology of ethics education. The workshop was held at the Ankara University School of Medicine on May 23rd, 2014, by the participation of bioethicists, medical educators, public health experts, a philosopher, a jurist, nursing ethicists, a clinician, undergraduate (1) and graduate (1) medical students [2]. The report of this workshop was published as a paper called “How can ethics be taught?”[3].

[Source 3: Cambridge Bioethics Education Turkey Working Group, “How Can Ethics Be Taught”, Turkish Journal of Bioethics, 2014; 2(3):213-224]

At its 5th workshop, Cambridge Bioethics Education Turkey Working Group included in its agenda to outline a Curricular Inventory of Ethics Education in Turkey. The aims of this Project is: to assess academic teaching infrastructure for medical ethics; to assess topics about medical ethics included in the curricula; to assess academic profile (teaching manpower) and professional background of faculty involved in teaching medical ethics; to assess educational strategies and curriculum design in terms of medical ethics [workload, context, teaching-learning methodologies, assessment of student performance (expected level of performance), evaluation of curriculum]. This multibased research is forthcoming [2].

Representatives of the Turkey Working Group regularly contribute to the Cambridge Consortiums of Bioethics Education which are annually held in Paris by submitting oral and poster papers.

They also attended Cambridge Network Interim Meetings that were held by the Dutch WG in Amsterdam VU University Medical Centre Metamedica (2015 and 2017), in Debrecen by the Hungarian Working Group at the University of Debrecen, Faculty of Public Health, Department of Behavioral Sciences (2016).

Turkey Working Group organized an Interim Meeting in Istanbul Acibadem University on 21-22 January 2016 with the theme of Best Practices in Bioethics Education.

In collaboration with the members of the Dutch Group, the members of the Turkey WG participated in Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) Congress in Barcelona, Spain on 27-31 August 2016 by a poster presentation called Cambridge Consortium of Bioethics Education Working Groups: The Cambridge Network”.

The Turkey Working Group continues to work in line with its aims and strategies. Members of the Turkey Group kindly proposed the Cambridge Consortium to include ethical issues in developing countries for discussion in the Consortium agenda, as well. The Group has already made two publications out of its activities in the field of bioethics education.

The Turkey Working Group has served as a platform to introduce the Moral Case Deliberation (MCD) practice which was developed by Amsterdam VU University Metamedica. Volkan Kavas and Yesim Isil Ulman were trained as facilitators in an International Course of Training Trainers conducted by VU University Metamedica in 2018. MCD has been inserted in the postgraduate medical education in Acibadem University School of Medicine in 2018 and it will gradually be disseminated and implemented in the Turkey context.

Which of the activities would you recommend to other working groups and for what reason?

1)      Taking a curricular inventory of the bioethics education through a multi-based study can be recommended to other working groups in order to map the terrain in their own countries to make a comparison at national and international levels.

2)      Ethics Rounds and Moral Case Deliberation practices can serve as model to consolidate moral learning in practice and to develop clinical ethics consultation.

What are import issues concerning medical ethics and/or bioethics education for your working group?

The Turkey Group argued in its paper [3] that the learning environment of medical education has both negative and positive influences on students’ acquisition of ethics-related skills, as well as professional skills, knowledge and attitudes. Considering the recent trend in medical education towards more student-centered and professional values-oriented curricula, one should expect that today graduates are more humanistic and virtuous. On the other hand, students are generally idealistic and compassionate when they start the journey to become doctors. However, despite students’ good intentions and medical schools’ struggle for improving teaching of ethics, related skills and attitudes, cynicism emerges eventually in most of the students while they are becoming healthcare professionals. Medicine has evolved into an expensive technological setting, in which commercialism provided the ground for the conflict between the interests of doctors and their patients.  Despite the barriers in the current structure of modern medicine and medical education, there are effective student-centered teaching methods and various strategies to overcome negative influences of the hidden curricula and to avoid the harsh impact of this paradox, which in the end help us produce better equipped healthcare professionals in terms ethical competency, moral awareness and reflective skills.

What are strong aspects of your working groups?

TR Group Members are professionals from diverse competencies and they prefer working interdisciplinary. They place special importance to work in a cross-disciplinary way through the perspective of medical humanities.

What are the points to be improved?

The Group initiative needs to be motivated and inspired. Collective studies and publications can be channels for keeping this initiative alive.  What needs to improve more with the Group members is trying more for equal contribution to the collective work.

Ethics education (medical ethics and bioethics)

What would be considered by the working group as a ‘best practice’ concerning ethics education and for what reason? Give a brief description of the teaching method.

The publication of “How Can Ethics Be Taught” can be considered as a good practice of the Turkey Working Group because it has been originated from a multi-disciplinarily held and voluntarily realized workshop with its rich content and discussions. The report of this workshop has succeeded in evolving into a publication.

The Project for a Curricular Inventory of Ethics Education in Turkey can also be considered as a good practice in ethics and bioethics education in a multi-disciplinary perspective. This study aims, as stated above, to assess academic teaching infrastructure for medical ethics; to assess topics about medical ethics included in the curricula; to assess academic profile (teaching manpower) and professional background of faculty involved in teaching medical ethics.