Bioethics in the UVA Medical School Curriculum
With the academic year 2000-01, the medical school initiated a new course, "Practice of Medicine." (http://hsc.virginia.edu/medicine/curriculum/POMintro.html)
A product of the school's recent curricular reform process, the first year (POM1), seeks to integrate bioethics into medical education without setting it apart as subject matter that can be separated from sound medical practice.
As part of POM1, the center offers lectures on the history of the profession from the ancient world to medical education at the University of Virginia, with an emphasis on the way that moral values are a continuing and evolving part of the story of the medical profession. Later lectures in POM1 delve more deeply into the context and elements of the Hippocratic Oath, and the emergence of modern bioethics from traditional medical ethics.
POM2, the second year course, includes Center for Bioethics faculty in a series of lectures on ethical issues throughout the life span, from reproductive medicine to pediatrics, disability, and death and dying.
In the third year, day-long conferences focus on clinical and pathological issues in a particular case, often with attention to ethical, legal, and humanistic matters as well. Depending on their scheduling constraints, fourth year students have an opportunity to take courses in the center's Master's Program in Bioethics. (http://www.virginia.edu/religiousstudies/graduate/bio/biodeg.html )