What place for ethics?An overview of ethics teaching in occupational therapy and physiotherapy programs in Canada

Abstract

Method:We reviewed the ethics content in the online curricula of 27 Canadian rehabilitation programs (OT & PT). Courses addressing ethical issues were identified through keyword searches, and were then subjected to both quantitative and textual descriptive analyses. Results:The mean proportion of credits allotted to courses that included ethics terminology was 5.9% (SD=1.4) for OT and 6.5% (SD=4.8) for PT (p=0.69). The most common terms in the course descriptions were 'ethics/ethical' followed by 'legal', 'professionalism', 'deontology' and 'regulatory'. Textual analysis revealed eight course topics, the most frequent being: standards of practice, ethical decision-making, clinical courses and mediation/communication. Conclusion:With the growing recognition and status of occupational therapy and physiotherapy in the healthcare system, and corresponding shifts in how professionals are being trained, it is crucial to assess and reflect upon the place accorded to and manner of teaching ethics.!

A Five-Country Survey on Ethics Education in Preservice Teaching Programs

“…By the 1990s, survey work had already begun to assess the extent of ethics education implementation in the professions. Today, a considerable cross-professional literature documents the state of ethics education in fields as diverse as medicine (DuBois & Burkemper, 2002;Eckles, Meslin, Gaffney & Helft, 2005;Fox, Arnold & Brody, 1995;Goldie, 2000;Musick, 1999;Lehmann, Kasoff, Koch & Federman, 2004), business (Christensen, Pierce, Hartman, Hoffman & Carrier, 2007;Swanson & Fisher 2008;Russel 2006), dentistry (Berk, 2001), occupational therapy and physiotherapy (Hudon et al, 2013), neuroscience (Walther, 2013), engineering (Stephan, 1999) and teaching (Glanzer & Ream, 2007).…”

“…Participant-reported survey responses on the frequency of a required ethics-related course was triangulated by way of a manual search of academic calendars, following the method adopted by Hudon et al (2013), Walther (2013) and Stephan (1999) in previous surveys on ethics education in the professions. The manual calendar aimed to determine how common a mandatory ethics-related course is in teacher education by collating information on courses that met our definition.…”

A Survey of Ethics Curriculum in Canadian Initial Teacher Education

“…By the 1990s, survey work had already begun to assess the extent of ethics education implementation in the professions. Today, a considerable crossprofessional literature documents the state of ethics education in fields as diverse as medicine (DuBois & Burkemper, 2002;Eckles, Meslin, Gaffney, & Helft, 2005;Fox, Arnold, & Brody, 1995;Goldie, 2000;Lehmann, Kasoff, & Federman, 2004;Musick, 1999), business (Christensen, Pierce, Hartman, Hoffman, & Carrier, 2007;Swanson & Fisher 2008;), dentistry (Berk, 2001), occupational and physiotherapy (Hudon et al, 2013), neuroscience (Walther, 2013), engineering (Stephan, 1999), and teaching (Glanzer & Ream, 2007).…”

“…Following the method adopted by Stephan (1999), Walther (2012), and Hudon et al (2013) and in previous surveys on ethics education in the professions, we also conducted a manual calendar search for the purposes of triangulating the data on program content obtained from the online survey. Program and course information were accessed through the institutional websites of departments, faculties, or schools of education at 40 Canadian universities.…”

Ethics Education in Australian Preservice Teacher Programs: A Hidden Imperative?

“…Participant-reported survey responses on the frequency of a required ethics-related subject was triangulated by way of a manual search of academic calendars, following the method adopted by Hudon et al (2013), Walther (2013) and Stephan (1999) in previous surveys on ethics education in the professions. The manual calendar search aimed to determine how common a mandatory ethics-related subject is in teacher education by collating information on subjects that met our definition.…”