Healthcare Ethics

The Center supports interdisciplinary education and serves as a resource for ethics education across the medical school.

Ethics Grand Rounds

The Ethics Grand Rounds offer lectures and discussions of cases that have been encountered in the professional experiences of our guest speakers. The cases illustrate the ethical situations that can arise in day-to-day work and continue to be faced by health care professionals. Ethics Grand Rounds are available for CME credit.

Integrated Ethics Education

Center faculty work with the Department of Medical Education to integrate ethics education into the first and second year experience of all medical students. We collaborate with clinical faculty to address ethics, professionalism, and other issues in clinical care during required third-year clerkships.

Ethics Consultations

The Center works with University Medical Center to provide ethics consultations, ethics rounds for healthcare providers, and serves as the ethics liaison for the HSC clinics.

Medical Jurisprudence

Medical Jurisprudence classes introduce third year medical students to Texas legal requirements for the practice of medicine.

Healthcare Ethics Law and Policy

Center faculty provide resident education in the ethics, law, and policy relating to Psychiatry. This course is part of the residency training program in psychiatry and is required for graduation and board eligibility. Legal issues addressed in this course include confidentiality, commitment, informed consent, decision making capacity and surrogacy, involuntary treatment, the right to refuse treatment, the insanity defense, guardianship, and the psychiatrist as expert witness. Ethical issues will include neuroethics, advocacy and the ethics of disability, conflicts of interest, the social construction of illness, and cosmetic psychopharmacology. The Center integrates ethics and jurisprudence required courses--for the Medical School and provides a resource across the HSC clinicians and inter-professional education and consultation on issues related to ethics, law and policy.

Professionalism

Center faculty conduct research and scholarship on issues of professionalism and the assessment of professionalism in medicine. The Center integrates humanities and cultural issues throughout required courses for Medical School, and provides a resource across the HSC campuses.

Research Ethics

Center faculty provide research ethics consultations and serve as consultants on NIH funded grants as Ethics Advisor.