Led by Brock, the students and residents discuss whether the requested medication should be administered, whether a placebo should be given or whether the patient should be told the medication she requested won't cure her ills. The participants wrestle with the issue for some 45 minutes. Beepers go off, the students and residents make phone calls, and charts as well as advice are exchanged while the conversation winds its way around the table. Brock asks, prodding them along. The conversation eventually concludes.
Some participants head for the door while others linger.
Dr. Kristine Tenebruso, a third-year medical resident in primary care, thanks Brock for the ethical discussion. Dr. Tenebruso is quick to respond. If you don't have these types of situations in your training, it becomes much harder to figure out. Some students, according to Brock, are more skeptical, believing medicine to be purely a science. Brown initiated the nation's first undergraduate bio-medical ethics program in the early 1970s and began ethics training in the medical school in the 1980s.