SYLLABUS FOR P548 – CLINICAL ETHICS PRACTICUM

This course will be coordinated by the IUPUI Department of Philosophy, the Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics at Clarian Health Partners, and the Indiana University Center for Bioethics.
 
Paul Helft, MD and Jason Eberl, PhD will be jointly responsible as course directors. Dr. Helft will be primarily responsible for coordinating the activities of the practicum on an individual basis with participating students. Dr. Eberl will be primarily responsible for evaluating and assigning grades for students participating in the practicum.  
 
The practicum is a one semester course. Students will be expected to spend a total of 40 hours per semester engaged in on-site activities related to the practicum. Up to four (4) students may be enrolled each semester in the practicum.

 
Practicum activities will take place at the IU School of Medicine, Clarian Hospitals, and (through special arrangement) Wishard Memorial Hospital. Students may use the Methodist Hospital library, located near the Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics, if they require temporary space with computers available for coordinating their activities or writing reports.
 
Relative to each student’s areas of interest, experience may be gained in a number of different hospital-based clinical ethics activities, such as clinical ethics consultation, chaplaincy and the religious and spiritual aspects of hospital ethics, and legal aspects of medical ethics and health law, including the following:
            
•        Participation in biweekly meetings of the ethics consultation service,
•        Participation in monthly meetings of the hospital ethics committee,
•        Attendance at lectures related to clinical ethics sponsored by the Fairbanks
         Center, Center for Bioethics, Medical Humanities Program, or Philosophy Department,
•        Observation and analysis of a consult note, and
•        Reading the literature about ethics consultation.
 
If time and circumstances permit, students will be able to observe a bedside consult. Students may also arrange meetings with individual members of a consultation service.

Students interested in additional experience in research ethics may also participate in the following activities:
 
•        Participation in meetings of any of the 5 IUPUI IRBs,
•        Participation in meetings of the IUPUI Executive Committee of IRBs,
•        Participation in meetings of the IUSM Conflict of Interest Committee,
•        Participation in relevant lab meetings of investigators designing
          clinical trials, or
•        Participation in the Research Subject Advocate program
 
To complete the practicum, students will select a case study they have learned about during the semester and, maintaining compliance with confidentiality requirements, will write a critical analysis of the case or a conceptual analysis of ethical issues relevant to the case in a 15-18 page term paper. This paper may culminate in a publishable manuscript for submission to an appropriate
journal or serve as the foundation for a student’s thesis/research project. In addition to the term paper, students will submit biweekly 1-2 page reports outlining their activities and briefly describing at least one of the cases they had learned about. One of these reports must be developed into a more in-depth 6-8 page analysis that will be due by mid-term and will be graded. This short analysis paper may serve as the foundation for the student’s term paper.
 
Dr. Eberl will evaluate all term papers and other written assignments and assign an overall course grade: 60% for the term paper, 30% for the short analysis paper, and 10% for turning in the biweekly reports.