Assessing ethics and law in medical schools: there is no single best answer

Medical ethics and law (MEL) have a well-established place in medical curricula within the UK, but appropriately assessing MEL in a medical school context can be extremely challenging. The Institute of Medical Ethics convened a working group focused on assessment in 2021, and in this article, we pre...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Authors: Moorlock, Greg (Author) ; Deans, Zuzana (Author) ; Trimble, Michael (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 2025
In: Journal of medical ethics
Year: 2025, Volume: 51, Issue: 10, Pages: 684-688
Online Access: Volltext (kostenfrei)
Volltext (kostenfrei)
Description
Summary:Medical ethics and law (MEL) have a well-established place in medical curricula within the UK, but appropriately assessing MEL in a medical school context can be extremely challenging. The Institute of Medical Ethics convened a working group focused on assessment in 2021, and in this article, we present a summary of the work undertaken by this group. We start by explaining the challenges presented by the assessment of MEL, highlighting the potentially demanding requirements set out by the General Medical Council in the UK. We then explore how MEL is currently assessed in UK medical schools. We go on to consider a number of different forms of assessment and their suitability for assessing ethics and law. Finally, we report the key recommendations from the working group and conclude that we are unconvinced that current approaches to assessing MEL are sufficient to robustly assess the General Medical Council's learning outcomes.
ISSN:1473-4257
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of medical ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1136/jme-2024-110298