Continuing Education in Ethical Decision Making Using Case Studies From Medical Social Work

Abstract

Medical social workers have needs for training in ethics that is specific to dilemmas that arise while providing service to patients who are very ill, mentally compromised, or in a terminal condition. A social work department developed a continuing education training to educate social workers in bioethics related to determining decisional capacity and understanding standards of ethical decision making. Case studies are used to illustrate ethical conflicts and the role of social workers in resolving them. The benefits of case study training are discussed.

Ethics education to support ethical competence learning in healthcare: an integrative systematic review

“…Simultaneously, it is valuable to design ethics education so that theoretical learning activities are integrated with practical ones and thereby provide an experience of real-life situations [ 46 ]. Skills can be practiced through workshops [ 49 ], case studies and problem-solving sessions [ 37 , 43 , 47 , 48 , 50 – 53 ]. Understanding one’s own values and attitudes can be facilitated through, for example, role-play or simulation activities [ 54 – 56 ], narratives [ 40 , 57 , 58 ], storytelling [ 42 ] and discussions in small groups [ 38 , 43 – 45 , 47 , 59 – 62 ].…”

“…A multivariate analysis did not find any association between this decrease and gender, course, or age. The phenomenon of moral segmentation was observed, with better performance in the worker and judge dilemma, than in the doctor dilemma Good McCormick et al [ 53 ], USA Qualitative Unknown Medical social workers, number of unknown participants Unknown Unknown Case studies could be used to illustrate ethical concepts and stimulate discussion, as well as to present new material to the participants Poor Mohammadi et al [ 49 ], Iran Quantitative To examine the effect of bioethical principles teaching on moral attitude of paramedic emergency personnel in Kerman city of Iran 60 prehospital paramedic personnel Questionnaires Analytical and descriptive statistics Ethical attitude means for both groups of control and intervention demonstrated that ethical attitude has meaningfully increased after the workshop Good Monteverde [ 50 ], Switzerland Quantitative To evaluate the feasibility and acceptance of the novel framework 58 nursing students Questionnaires Unknown The framework was founded on problem-based learning. Students considered ethical theories—as taught within the proposed framework—as practically applicable, useful, and transferable to practice Fair Pandya et al [ 58 ], India Qualitative To describe the experiences of using of narratives written by students in teaching Unknown Unknown Unknown The student writes a narrative from a patient’s perspective, based on real experiences.…”

An Exploratory Study Examining Instructional Decisions, Strategies, and Ethics in Social Work Education

“…A variety of instructional approaches are being used to teach social work ethics however, the results are inconsistent with the social work literature. Vignettes and case studies are common activities used to teach ethics (Dodd & Jansson, 2004;Fossen et al, 2014;McCormick et al, 2014;Ringel & Mishna, 2007), yet this survey found that lectures were the most common method of ethics instruction. Noninteractive instructional methods such as the use of lectures and readings were found to be used quite frequently in this study, which supports the opinions of several respondents regarding the lack of creativity in teaching methods.…”

“…Fossen et al (2014) used case examples from various settings such as a domestic violence shelter, child protective services investigation, and a community mental health center to illustrate the steps in the ethical decision-making process. Continuing education providers in medical social work used case studies to illustrate ethical concepts, such as patient autonomy and capacity, and to stimulate discussion among training participants (McCormick et al, 2014). Dodd and Jansson (2004) used case examples from a hospital setting as a teaching tool to highlight the need for ensuring that patient and client needs are represented in ethical deliberations.…”