2021 Arete Medical Ethics Summer Seminar (Virtual)

Apply now to participate in a special, two-day, virtual (online) version of the Arete Medical Ethics Summer Seminar. This seminar is designed for physicians in training and open to nursing students also. The seminar invites students to examine the central ethical questions that arise in the everyday practice of medicine and to interpret those questions through a moral framework drawing from both natural law and medicine’s traditional orientation toward the patient’s health. This framework will be contrasted with principlism and consequentialism as participants consider what sort of practice medicine is, whether it has a rational end or goal, and how medicine contributes to human flourishing.

The seminar will consider common clinical ethical cases to examine perennial ethical concerns that arise in the practice of medicine, including: the nature of the clinician-patient relationship; the limits of medicine, the meaning of autonomy, the place of conscience in the physician’s work, the difference between an intended effect and a side effect, proportionality, human dignity, sexuality and reproduction, the beginning of life, disability, end-of-life care, and death. The seminar aims to equip participants with intellectual tools that can help them discern how to practice medicine well in the face of medicine’s clinical challenges and moral complexities.

Faculty
Farr Curlin, MD, Duke University
Christopher Tollefsen, PhD, University of South Carolina 

Eligibility
This seminar is open to entering and current medical students, as well as nursing students.

Application Requirements and Instructions:
All applicants must submit the following forms and documents via e-mail to john.rose@duke.edu.

-Curriculum vitae or resume, including your nationality.
-Cover letter discussing the reasons for your interest in the seminar, an overview of any relevant experience in the seminar’s topic. Please explain how you found out about the seminar.

Those interested may also like to check out this write-up of our 2019 seminar.