Cambridge Bioethics Education Turkey Working Group

Cambridge Bioethics Education Turkey Working Group, III. Workshop Report “How can ethics be taught in Health Sciences?”, Ankara, 23 May 2014 CAMBRIDGE BIOETHICS EDUCATION TURKEY WORKING GROUP, III. WORKSHOP REPORT “How can ethics be taught in Health Sciences?” Ankara, 23 May 2014 Workshop Group I Report By answering the question above, while creating new ones in search of answers to them, this Workshop aims to emancipate ourselves from clichées and stereotyped thoughts and applications; it intends to emphasize the importance of collaboration and interaction. Discussing the feasibility of teaching bioethics, noticing the positive and negative effects of learning environment over ethical values and ethical decision-making will help to be aware, to understand, to solve the problems in this process. During medical education, the dynamics at macro level are to determine particularly the development of ethical attitudes and behaviors of the medical students, young physicians and healthcare professionals in general. This determining factor in question can have either positive or negative effects. As a result of this interaction, the student develops attitudes and behaviors different from the point he has started in the beginning of medical education process.

Turkish Journal of Bioethics, 2014;1(4):184-7.

The Cambridge Consortium of Bioethics Education The Cambridge Consortium of Bioethics Education was established by the Cambridge University Press in 2011. The Platform mainly aimed at developing bioethics education through annual meetings with other bioethics educators around the world to share experiences and ideas on developing curricula . The Consortium initiated country-based Working Groups in June 2013, specifically in Hungary, New Zealand, Pan-Arab (Lebanon), Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, The Netherlands, and Turkey . The purpose of the Working Groups is to encourage people and institutions to work together on developing bioethics education in their countries by setting up focus groups that invite others to share information and develop mutual projects; to further how bioethics is taught in universities, hospitals, and to the general public. Turkey Working Group Upon the invitation of the Cambridge Consortium, the Turkey Working Group was established in 2013. Focus Group Members in Turkey are composed of Murat Aksu, Fatih Artvinli, Nadi Bakirci, Tuna Cakar, Muhtar Cokar, Figen Demir, Volkan Kavas, Gulsum Onal, Isil Pakis, Melike Sahiner, Pinar Topsever, Inci User, Yesim Isil Ulman (chair), Kevser Vatansever, Vedat Yildirim. The Group is based in the History of Medicine and Ethics Department at Acibadem University School of Medicine in Istanbul. The Group dynamic is based on the volunteering zeal and dedication of the professionals forming this collective.

Cambridge Consortium of Bioethics Education Working Groups' representatives held an interim meeting at Amsterdam VU University Department of Medical Humanities on January 29, 2015. Participants: Kevser Vatansever, Volkan Kavas, Yesim Isil Ulman (Turkey), Yolande Voskes, Menno de Bree, Guy Widdershoven (Netherlands), Peter Kakuk (Hungary), Vojin Rakic (Serbia), Rouven Porz (Switzerland, guest). Aim of the meeting: to exchange experiences and explore the opportunities for mutual, multi-based scientific research for the working groups in the Cambridge Consortium of Bioethics Education. Program of the meeting: After an introductory round of the participants, a draft research proposal was presented on behalf of the Turkish working group. In the afternoon, a seminar was organized with the staff of the Department of Medical Humanities, on ethics education in international perspective. Next, possibilities for funding were discussed, especially COST. Finally, future cooperation was discussed, focusing on goals and possible contributions to European programs, and decisions were made for further actions.

UNESCO Workshop Book of Proceedings, pp:111-123, 2011

Introduction This study aims to introduce the Turkish Bioethics Association (TBA) by dealing with its objectives, functions, works and activities as an academic, non-governmental organization in Turkey with a special emphasis on the activities of social responsibility. It will also try to envisage future perspectives of the TBA. Establishment of TBA TBA was founded in Ankara in 1994. The idea of establishing a bioethics society in Turkey was inspired by Prof. Yaman Ors and Dr. Yasemin Oguz, on their way back from the 1st World Bioethics Congress at Amsterdam where many countries and members were represented by local, national societies (12). First steps to the Association were taken by the academics of medical ethics, veterinary medicine ethics, and dentistry ethics. Prof. Berna Arda, the first president of TBA worked to institutionalize the Association just from its inception. In a short while, the Association brought together not only bioethicists from the medical sciences, but also the authors of ethics, history and philosophy with young MA and PhD researchers from the allied disciplines all over Turkey (13). The Scope of TBA Turkish Bioethics Association is defined, according to its Bylaws, as a platform to take up and discuss problems arising in health care and medical sciences in an interdisciplinary way. This definition necessitates the explanation of the concept of bioethics which is implemented in its broadest sense by the Association. TBA considers bioethics as a discipline dealing with moral value issues in practice of healthcare professions (such as medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, veterinary medicine, etc.), and also other disciplines (biology, social sciences, philosophy, law, ...) (14). TBA is concerned not only with moral problems stemmed from medical-clinical practices, but also with other moral issues originating from the activities influencing the living beings. Biomedical researches, publication ethics, environmental ethics, animal rights, policies affecting health care system, public health issues and related topics are also main concerns of TBA. Objectives of TBA The objectives of the Association are: • to contribute to the development of bioethics, • to improve the undergraduate and postgraduate education • to develop contacts with healthcare disciplines as well as with other relevant areas, • to facilitate the exchange of information between researchers in bioethics • to organize regular academic, scientific meetings in bioethics; • to encourage the development of research and teaching in bioethics; • to promote and make known of issues of bioethics to the public. • to be alert and attentive on problems of bioethics offending dignity of the discipline (15). Recent Meetings On the basis of social responsibility TBA is quite sensible to the hot topics of the health system in Turkey and some of its recent meetings may be exemplified to this aim: Symposium on the Ethical Aspects of Organ Transplantation (30), Symposium of the New Reproductive Technologies and New Motherhood have been realized to provide for a multidisciplinary platform to discuss the issues in view of medicine, ethics, forensic medicine, law, sociology, psychiatry and history (31). The Panel of Medical Malpractice has set a good example to this approach by dealing with medical error and the mandatory medical insurance that concern all healthcare workers in Turkey (32). The meetings mentioned above have been realized in cooperation with the Istanbul Chamber of Physicians as an indispensable stakeholder of the issues at debate. The latest and sixth congress was named after New Horizons in Bioethics in line with the previous congress in 2008 by emphasizing TBA’s mission to hold meeting in a bioethical perspective. 2010 Congress has achieved this goal successfully by integrating the studies of medical ethics and related sciences together with the cooperative branches such as medical education, medical law, sociology, public health, history, biomedical branches in a multidisciplinary vision. It has also given a special emphasis on the rights of vulnerable groups by assuring them a platform of speech (33). Turkish Bioethics Association, as a member of EACME, will be organizing the European Association of the Centres of Medical Ethics Annual Meeting for the first time in Istanbul-Turkey on September 15-17th 2011 (34). The scientific programme will cover a wide range of topics related to bioethics from a cross-cultural perspective, including bioethics and humanities, universal values and cultural diversity, European Biomedicine Convention, human rights and bioethics, and health care policy making. This international platform will hopefully provide a basis for handling the professional and moral values and bioethical issues in conflict. On the eve of the event, Globalising European Bioethics Education Summer School will be held for foreign and Turkish participants in conjunction with TBA-EACME Conference on September 11-14, 2011. The Executive Committee wishes its local members and international colleagues all to experience the international arena for exploring moral and ethical values in a cross-cultural vision leaning on a participatory democratic platform nourished from the ethical discourse. Conclusion The teaching of ethics owes a great deal to the medical school curriculum in Turkey and has rooted in the steps of 19th century modernization movement in medical education. The emergence of the Turkish Bioethics Association can be better evaluated in line with this historical past that has given rise to the making of a bioethics society. As an academic and non-governmental organization, Turkish Bioethics Association has substantiated itself both at local and international platforms as a promising society based on this rich tradition. It will keep on contributing to the academic literature, collegiate teaching and current debates in healthcare system in view of bioethics by its functions briefly depicted in this study. Acknowledgements: I deeply appreciate the immense support of my colleagues in the Executive Board; and the contributions of the members of Türkiye Biyoetik Derneği without whom a real teamwork would have never been accomplished.

Ethics & Bioethics (in Central Europe), 2012

Due to the interdisciplinary nature of bioethics, there are many ways of how its problems can be presented and introduced to students. Which method is used by a teacher depends on the student group; their age, previous bioethical knowledge, the overall aim of their studies. The aim of this article is to emphasize the necessity of the different content of bioethical modules for students of medical sciences and students of ethics. Future physicians and nurses are supposed to learn what the role of ethics is in their professions and how to recognize moral dilemmas (mostly through case studies), while the task of ethics students is different. Their goal is to extend their abilities to discover moral conflicts, to analyze them more deeply, and to argue about the problems in a more consistent and theoretical way. In the final part of the paper, I present the opinion that a textual seminar, which does not necessarily need to be focused on the problems of bioethics, can help students to a wider and more complex understanding of bioethical issues.

EU INTEGRITY Project website: http://h2020integrity.eu/

Two vast fields of ethics are very relevant in the context of medical education: bioethics and research integrity. Yet, curiously, the instruction in these two areas shows a significant imbalance in medical schools across Europe. The teaching of bioethics has become over the past few decades an inescapable component of medical education in most European countries. In contrast, little attention is still paid to the instruction of medical students in research integrity, that is, in the ethical rules that govern the procedures for producing scientifically valid research results. The fact is that both bioethics and research integrity are crucial constituents in the education of future medical doctors.

2014

Although at first it had taken a not-so-promising pathway, importing a combination of the Georgetown principlism and the cult of Van Rensselaer Potter (mostly thanks to Ivan Šegota), bioethics in Croatia eventually did develop into something much more dynamic and original. This activity has resulted in a few hundreds of books (only the Pergamena series, for instance, numbers 28 titles), papers, and even journals (Jahr), two major annual conferences (Rijeka and Lošinj), the innovative concept of Integrative Bioethics and the pioneer contributions to the study of Fritz Jahr and Van Rensselaer Potter. But, more than anything else, the result of this activity has been the forming of a very particular South-East European bioethical network of scholars and institutions, guaranteeing the future for research and intellectual exchange to the entire region.

2014

This article highlights the importance of teaching “bioethics and human rights” to undergraduate students seeking health care degrees and illustrates how this topic fits well within these programs of studies. Historical, cultural, anthropological and practical reasons support teaching these topics as enrichment of medical training. The years after the Second World War showed how bioethics, human rights and medicine are closely intertwined. Moreover the relationship between human rights and bioethics has grown ever closer increasingly involving medicine and health care professionals. The authors observe that medical students have to face a cultural pluralism in bioethics and biolaw and we give students the opportunity to develop their critical thinking and logical argumentation abilities as well as their interest in academic research. Furthermore, the authors – who draw up briefly the experience of the Institute of Bioethics at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the UCSC (Rome) -...