한국의과대학에서의 의료윤리교육현황 분석

Ever since two Christian medical schools, one Catholic and one protestant began teaching medical ethics to the students as a regular teaching subject in early 1980s, number of medical schools adopting the medical ethics course has been steadily increased as the importance of teaching medical ethics in medical schools has been stressed in various literatures.

However, few data exist describing current practices in medical ethics education in Korea.

This study aimed to find out how many medical schools are including ethics education in their curricula and analyze the pattern of ethics education by the type of school, years founded and the class size of the medical schools.

Major findings obtained from this study are as follows:

1. All 41 medical schools in Korea were providing ethics course; as a regular course subject in 37 medical schools and as an integrated/special lectures in the rest 4 medical schools.

2. Thirty three medical schools(80.5%) reported teaching ethics in one year only and the rest 8 medical schools reported teaching ethics in more than 2 years. Two medical schools were providing the courses in 5 years. Sixteen medical schools(39.0%) reported providing the courses in the third year of medical course and 12 medical schools(29.3%), in the second year of medical course or in the second year of pre-medical course.

3. Mean number of hours for ethics teaching in 41 medical schools was 29.7±24.1 (range: 5-136), and the mean number of credits was 1.6±1.4 (range: 0-8).

4. Most common content areas taught in Korean medical schools were 'ethical concept'(in 39 medical schools), 'reproductive ethics' and (in 37 medical schools), and 'ethical principles', 'dr-patient relationship', and 'death and dying ethics' (in 36 medical schools).

Twenty four medical schools(58.5%) were using course materials developed by the schools themselves or faculties, but 19 medical schools(46.3%) were using the textbook developed based on students learning objectives and published by the Korean Society for Medical Ethics Education. Eleven medical schools(26.8%) were combining other textbooks on medical ethics