Research Information System
8th Cambridge Consortium of Bioethics Education, Paris, France, 04 July 2018 - 06 February 2020, pp.1
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.