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Education: Goals

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Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics

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Abstract

The first bioethics courses were offered in the 1960s, and with them began a still ongoing debate on the goals of bioethics education. Should ethics education equip students with the necessary tools to make ethically sound decisions, or should the aim be more ambitious: to produce virtuous professionals? Or could ethics education even be a cure for all that is morally wrong within the practice of medicine?

Nowadays, the debate on goals still continues, but the themes are roughly the same as, say, 20 years ago. Important reasons for this slow progress seem to be a lack of consensus on underlying theoretical meta-ethical assumptions and imprecise use of concepts, especially when it comes to teaching bioethics in the context of medical professionalism.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Medical Education, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Menno de Bree

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  1. Menno de Bree
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Correspondence to Menno de Bree .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Healthcare Ethics, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Henk ten Have

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de Bree, M. (2016). Education: Goals. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09483-0_160

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