Division of
Medical Ethics and Humanities
The Division is sponsored by the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine.
The Division of Medical Ethics and Humanities' mission is to prepare physicians to provide respectful, humane patient care, to address current ethical problems in health care through research and discussion and to engage with providers, patients, and families to resolve their ethical conflicts. We use relevant medicine, law, moral reasoning, literature, drama, and art to inform physicians about ethical issues and prepare them to empathize and communicate compassionately.
Click here for a complete listing of the 2013 Physicians Literature and Medicine Readings
Slide presentation from October 2009 Internal Medicine Grand Rounds, by Leslie Francis, PhD, JD: "Interoperable Electronic Health Records, the American Re-Investment and Recovery Act, and Patient Privacy"
Featured Publication
The Patient as Victim and Vector
Ethics and Infectious Disease
by:
Margaret P. Battin
Leslie P. Francis
Jay A. Jacobson
Charles B. Smith
Newsletters
Legislative News Alert
The Utah Advance Health Care Directive Act went into effect 1/1/08. Instructions and Form, electronic Instructions and Form, and a Provider Guide to the new law, and various presentations on the law are available at www.aging.utah.edu/directives
Calendar of Events View Calendar
- Wed, May 29 2013
Evening Ethics Discussion--with Alice Dreger, PhD
Why do we keep seeing the same basic ethical mistakes over and over again in clinical research, particularly failure of infor ... Read More
- Thu, May 30 2013
David Green Memorial Lecture by Alice Dreger, PhD
Alice Dreger, PhD, is Professor of Clinical Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg Scho ... Read More
- Wed, Jun 06 2013
Physicians Literature and Medicine Discussion Group
In his 1925 Pulitzer Prize winning novel Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis examines the personal, ethical, and social challenges fac ... Read More
Video
"Conflict," a reflection in dance on the experience of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), created by Lee Audd
As their schedules allow, students in their 3rd and 4th years of study at the School of Medicine can choose from several elective seminars. In April 2012, Gretchen Case offered "Disability, Art, and Culture," a 2-week elective course that explored the meanings of disability beyond the medical perspectives of treatment and rehabilitation. The class focused on the ways that disability informs the literary, visual, and performing arts--and how the arts affect ideas of disability. Given the option of a creative final project, the students rose to the challenge, making extraordinary works of art that included photography, painting, glass sculpture, collage and multimedia, cooking, poetry, and dance. This video shows a performance of one of those final projects. "Conflict," a reflection on the experience of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), was created by Lee Audd, at the time a 4th-year medical student and now a resident in anesthesiology at the University of Florida College of Medicine. His sister-in-law, Ariane Audd, a 2012 graduate of the Department of Modern Dance at the University of Utah, co-created and dances the piece in this video.
Best Medical Ethics Essay
Congratulations to Katherine Poruk as the recipient of the 2012 Best Medical Ethics Essay Award!
Katherine Poruk has earned this year's award for her essay, "Too Old for an Organ: The Ethical Dilemma of Age in Cardiac Transplantation." Katherine has agreed to share an abridged version of her reflective essay in our Fall Medical Ethics and Humanities Newsletter.
The award for the Best Medical Ethics Essay is received by a student in the Medical Ethics Course for Senior Medical Students, a required course taught each Spring by the Division of Medical Ethics and Humanities.
