Drs. Carrese, Hughes, Moon, Taylor, and Erin McDonald, MPP collaborated to successfully execute an empirical project in the Department of Medicine in 2007: Ethics in Clinical Practice Project in Medicine. Interactions between internal medicine trainees and their faculty preceptors, occurring in outpatient internal medical clinics at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Hopkins Bayview, were observed for 20 hours in each clinic. Analysis of these data are in progress, and this effort has been joined by Dr. Beach and Kiran Khaira, MA.An abstract from this project (“Everyday Ethics in Internal Medicine Resident Clinic”) was presented as a poster at the third annual Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Symposium on Medical Education Research, as an oral abstract presentation at both the Mid-Atlantic regional Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) meeting in March 2009 and the annual SGIM meeting in May 2009, and the ASBH Annual Meeting in October 2009. Knowledge and insights generated from the internal medicine empirical project are being used to inform the on-going educational programs for residents in this department. A paper on this project is being submitted for publication.
In addition, after reviewing the cases brought forward by
residents during ethics rounds, Drs. Beach and Hughes have developed a
conceptual framework for addressing strong emotions in the teaching of clinical
ethics to internal medicine residents. Drs. Beach and Hughes have noted that
the residents are typically motivated to discuss a case in which they or their
patients have a strong emotion, such as sadness, frustration, or anger, and
that these emotions cause the residents to wonder whether they have done
something wrong and make communication with patients and families more
difficult. A manuscript detailing this process, “The Elephant in the Room:
Approaching Emotion in the Teaching of Clinical Ethics,” is currently being
prepared for submission. The abstract was presented at the annual SGIM meeting
in May 2009 and the annual meeting of the American Society of Bioethics and
Humanities in October 2009.
Project in Pediatrics
Drs. Moon, Taylor, Carrese and Hughes and Erin McDonald, MPP collaborated to successfully execute an observation project in pediatrics: Ethics in Clinical Practice Project in Pediatrics. The major goal of this empirical project was to identify ethical issues present in the everyday outpatient pediatric practice. Interactions between pediatric faculty preceptors and pediatric residents were observed during the 19 half day clinic sessions, totaling 76 hours of observation. Two manuscripts from the pediatric observation project have been published:
In addition, Drs. Taylor, Beach, Carrese, and Hughes and Erin McDonald, MPP are all working with Dr. Moon on an analysis of the pediatric trainee reflective narratives. One paper from this project is being submitted for publication: “Analyzing Written Reflections to Assess the Ethical Reasoning of Pediatric Residents.”
