Campus-Wide Ethics Program
In 2009, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) established a Campus-Wide Advisory Committee of faculty across all disciplines, dedicated to working together to develop innovative, interdisciplinary programs.
Key activities include:
- Faculty development through seminars and case study evaluation; and
- Development and launching of online ethics coursework, allowing students from all disciplines to address ethical issues as a team.
What We Do
While health care providers of the future will increasingly work as teams of caregivers, each health care field, such as medicine, nursing, dentistry, and public health, has developed its own ethics program to distinguish its field from others. Recognizing the tremendous need for interprofessional programs across all medical specialties, UTHealth launched a Campus-Wide Ethics Program in 2009—the first of its kind in the nation. With its six professional schools, UTHealth is uniquely positioned to develop a leadership role in how caregiving teams from different disciplines address common ethical decisions, minimizing potential conflict.
How We're Different
As the largest academic health science center located in the world's largest medical center, we are uniquely situated to address the ethical decision-making capacity of tomorrow's health care teams. Utilizing innovative curricula, enhanced faculty development, and program-wide assessments, we are helping to forge new trends in health care education. Programs such as our Quality Enhancement Plan, serve as a road map for the future and command national attention in the field of interdisciplinary ethics training.
Program Goals
- To improve the quality and quantity of ethics in the curricula of all six schools of UTHealth, including medical, dental, nursing, public health, the graduate school, and biomedical informatics;
- To improve interprofessional education in ethics at both the student and faculty levels by teaching consistent viewpoints across all health care specialties, thereby revealing and addressing potential conflicts before they arise.
Guiding Principles
- All health care professions need to be trained to work together as a cooperative team, whether in a private office, research center, or hospital setting;
- We encourage students across the health professions to work together by promoting interprofessional teaching that is innovative in content and delivery;
- Using distance learning, we encourage students from different health professions to read and reflect upon the same cases and share ideas;
- Through interprofessional teamwork, students address common ethical issues which ultimately benefit caregivers and patients alike.