The revised undergraduate medical curriculum in the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine from academic year 2008-09 includes an integrated ‘longitudinal track’ in Health Ethics, Law and Professionalism (‘HELP’) ,beginning with the first-year intake in August 2008. Clinicians from throughout Singapore join with Centre staff in planning and teaching sessions with whole year-groups, and facilitate follow-on tutorials in which students, interacting with one another and with their tutors, develop their ethical sensibilities and try their hand at ethical argument. Topics are chosen and timed with regard to the overall curriculum. For example, within a first-year module on Blood, Respiratory and Cardiovascular, there are Ethics sessions on The Value of the Body: Blood and Organ Donation, and on Discontinuing Treatment. In such ways, Ethics, Law and Professionalism, taught and assessed throughout the five years of the course, is integral to it, not a mere ‘add-on’. The ‘bottom line’ will be doctors’ interactions with patients.  

During this curriculum transition phase, CBmE continues to conduct continuous assessment of ethics in Year 4 for students in the existing curriculum.

For inquiries, please contact:

Prof Paul Macneill
Centre for Biomedical Ethics
National University of Singapore
Tel : +65 6516 8141