Bioethics Internship Seminar—Clinical Ethics HHE 5701

The Bioethics Program of the Center for Health Humanities and Ethics offers approximately ten undergraduate Clinical Ethics Internships each semester. This course, HHE 5701, is designed to provide students with experience in discerning and analyzing ethical issues as they arise in clinical settings. Each student will spend 3-4 hours per week on a clinical unit (the same unit throughout the semester) under the mentorship of a health care professional. Weekly seminar time will focus on the student’s reflections as a participant observer and on the ethical issues that commonly arise in health care. Students are expected to have basic background knowledge of common questions in bioethics and methods of analyzing those questions.

This program typically places students in such clinical services as: Neonatal ICU, HIV/AIDS Clinic, Cancer Center, Pediatric ICU, Pastoral Care, Palliative Care, Teen and Young Adult Center, Emergency Department, Organ Transplant, Advanced Heart Failure Program, Surgical/Trauma ICU, Medical ICU, and the Neurancy Neurological ICU. Each student is assigned a clinical mentor who is responsible for exposing the student to the practices and ethical problems of their field.

The course is led by Mary Faith Marshall, Director of the Center for Health Humanities and Ethics. The weekly seminar focuses on topics that transcend the borders of the different internship placements, such as:  “doing” ethics in a clinical setting; the patient/surrogate decision maker experience; moral understandings in the clinical setting, the sociology of the modern hospital and clinical training; and the pragmatics of ethics and moral distress case consultation. Because the course is run as a seminar we look for applicants who can reliably make thoughtful contributions to class discussion.

Each student is required to thoroughly analyze the assigned readings, participate actively in class, and complete a research project focusing on a problem or issue presented during their internship.

Preference will be given to graduating 4th years who are minoring in Health, Ethics, and Society (formerly Bioethics), doing an interdisciplinary major, or who have done well in one or more upper level bioethics electives. It is rare for 3rd years to gain admission; such students need to present special circumstances.

Entrance to this internship program is by application only. Because course enrollment is limited and traditionally has more applicants than can be accommodated, your acceptance in the course means that someone else has been denied access. Do not apply unless you are committed to taking the course.