Ethics education in neonatal-perinatal medicine in the United States

Abstract

Neonatology is one of the specialties that has immensely benefited from advances in medical technology in the last few decades. These advances have paralleled the rise of the civil rights movements and wider recognition of individual rights. As a result, ethical decision-making has become more complex, involving patients, parents, members of the health care team, and society in general. This has created a need for formal ethics education in neonatal-perinatal medicine fellowship programs. In this article, we briefly explore the current published data on ethics education in pediatric residency and neonatal-perinatal medicine fellowship programs. Then, we discuss the questions an academic educator may face while developing an ethics curriculum in his/her medical institution. Finally, we present the ethics curriculum that we developed in our neonatal-perinatal medicine fellowship program.