Background to the teaching of medical ethics in UK medical schools

It has only been in the past 20 years or so that ethics as a subject in its own right has been formally taught in UK medical schools. Although there had earlier been enthusiasts making the case for the inclusion of formal teaching of ethics and law within the curriculum (see below), a key catalyst for change in the UK was the publication in 1987 of the Pond report (Boyd, 1987), followed in 1993 by Tomorrow's Doctors, published by the General Medical Council (GMC, 1993), which set out in broad terms what was expected of medical schools in the training of medical students. The teaching of medical ethics and the acquiring of appropriate behaviour were specifically mentioned. Since medical schools had to demonstrate that they met the terms of the GMC's requirements, room was made in a crowded syllabus for some ethics teaching. The content of what might be taught emerged through a consensus statement (see Box 3.1). This was revisited under the auspices of the Institute of Medical Ethics (Stirrat et al, 2010). The latest editions of the GMC's Tomorrow's Doctors (2009a) and Medical Students: Professional Values and Fitness to Practise (2009b) will bring about further change to the medical schools’ curriculum.

The introduction of medical ethics as a core component of the undergraduate curriculum has not been without opposition. Hope (1998) addressed the three principal reasons behind the resistance.