Interdisciplinary Ethics Certificate Program for Graduate Medical Education Trainees

Over the past several decades, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has placed greater emphasis on ethics as a component of professional competency.¹  As part of the ACGME Common Program Requirements, all graduate medical education (GME) programs must have curricular elements focused on the “advancement of residents' knowledge of ethical principles foundational to medical professionalism.”² 

Substantial effort has been put into centralizing the goals of ethics education and optimizing content delivery at the undergraduate medical education (UME) level.^3–5  However, there has been less success in continuing this education in GME. Ethics education within GME varies significantly in curriculum, duration, and scope, depending on the institution and specific residency programs.^6–11  Explanations for this gap include a real or perceived lack of time, lack of infrastructure or resources to teach ethics, as well as numerous competing demands for educational content within the residency core curriculum.^10,12  However, many residents and program directors want ethics education.^13,14  Therefore, we in the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society (CBMES) sought to improve GME ethics education through a certificate program open to all active trainees at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. This 1-year course integrates seminars, clinical and administrative experiences, and a capstone project to enhance trainees' understanding and practical application of health care ethics. Future expansion of this program may fulfill the requirement of ethics education across residency programs at our institution.

The Ethics Certificate program was designed to provide further in-depth training to residents and fellows with an interest in biomedical ethics. All residents and fellows in postgraduate year (PGY) 2 or greater in any specialty were eligible to participate in the program. A Distinction in Biomedical Ethics was awarded by the Office of Graduate Medical Education at graduation to all participants who completed all curricular elements. The application process for the program included a brief personal statement, as well as a letter from the program director supporting the trainee's time commitment to the program. The Ethics Certificate program required satisfactory completion of 3 primary educational components: didactics/seminars, experiential activities, and a capstone project (Box).

Seminars were led by core faculty and pairs of trainees assigned to each session; these seminars were also facilitated by invited faculty content experts. Faculty and staff support was voluntary and, given their expertise, no training was necessary. Each seminar consisted of a roughly 30-minute didactic on the seminar subject followed by a 1-hour case-based discussion. Seminar content was developed by the CBMES faculty to cover primary areas of clinical bioethics (Box). Trainees were expected to attend all seminars, which were scheduled in the early evening to increase attendance.

Clinical experience with biomedical ethics was gained through a 2-week elective on the Vanderbilt Ethics Consultation Service. Trainees also participated in the Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) Ethics Committee. Combined, these experiences taught participants to work through the process of ethics consultations.

Following the certificate program, trainees completed a course evaluation distributed electronically via REDCap.^15,16  Ten multiple-choice questions using a 5-point Likert scale (1, strongly disagree, to 5, strongly agree) were included (Figure). The results were compiled from the first 4 years of the program (academic years 2017–2018, 2018–2019, 2019–2020, 2020–2021). Scholarly research in the field of ethics published by program participants was also tracked. Publications were confirmed with PubMed searches of program participants, ranging from the date of their participation to July 2021. The Vanderbilt University Medical Center Institutional Review Board approved the survey plan as exempt research.

Sixty-five trainees completed the program over 4 years. The participants spanned a diverse range of specialties, including internal medicine, pediatrics, surgery, anesthesiology, and many others. The most well-represented specialty was pediatrics and its associated subspecialties. Enrollment breakdown followed trends based on residency department sizes at our institution. Of the 65 participants, 58 (89.4%) completed the post-course evaluation. Overall, the course was well-received, and 98.2% (57 of 58) of respondents indicated they would recommend it to a friend (Figure). Respondents unanimously agreed that the course enhanced their knowledge of biomedical ethics, and all believed they would use something they learned in the course in their future practice. Additionally, 86.8% (46 of 53) of respondents strongly agreed that the ethics consult service was an effective learning environment.

While not a requirement for completing the certificate program, participants were encouraged to pursue scholarly endeavors to add to the literature on clinical ethics. Three trainees subsequently published articles related to topics addressed in the program.^12,17,18  All other participants delivered conference- or seminar-based teaching to their peers as their capstone project (see the box for examples), and several trainees presented their work at national meetings.

We sought to develop a program that would provide advanced ethics training within the available time of active clinical trainees. This program offers a unique learning experience through the inclusion of multiple specialties. Prior works discussing ethics education for residents have been focused within specific residency programs or specialties. That model, however, is counter to the proposed structure of ethics education by Culver et al which encourages interdisciplinary ethics education.³  The team-based nature of medicine necessitates an integrated approach to bioethics, as clinicians may lack a full understanding of all ethical situations, and bioethicists may not appreciate the clinical nuances of a particular case. Through its establishment in the CBMES and collaborations with nearly 20 different residency programs, this course exposed participants to a greater breadth of experiences and perspectives compared to prior ethics education models. While this optional certificate program does not directly fulfill the ACGME ethics-related competency expectations for all trainees, the capstone projects serve as an opportunity for peer-to-peer ethics education across all the residency programs involved. This was invaluable for delivering ethics content across our medical center. Other institutions could expand on this voluntary certificate program depending on local resources to help meet the mandate of required ethics education.

Several limitations of this study should be noted. First, the 65 participants represent a fraction of all trainees at VUMC. Enrollment in this program has intentionally been kept under 20 trainees per year to provide ample support and mentoring to each participant. Likewise, we recognize adopting this program at other institutions may be limited by faculty constraints and ethics consult service volume. Selection and nonresponse bias may also limit the generalizability of these findings. Additionally, because a pre-course survey was not administered, the true effects of the program on trainee responses cannot be fully determined. Finally, while the goal of this certificate program was to develop ethical and professional physicians, as well as to enhance trainees' practical application of bioethics, measuring these variables is uniquely complex. Thus, the post-course evaluation questions were limited to only the scope of skill and knowledge acquisition. Future work will aim to implement objective and subjective assessments to more robustly quantify program outcomes, in addition to enrolling larger trainee cohorts.

We designed and implemented a Distinction in Biomedical Ethics program at our academic medical center. This unique program, open to all trainees PGY-2 or higher, provided advanced training and experience in clinical bioethics. Participants were able to share the knowledge they gained with their residency programs through capstone projects.

The authors would like to thank Dr. Kyla Terhune, Dr. Rebecca Swan, Dr. John McPherson, and Dr. Joe Fanning for their contributions in developing the ethics certificate program. The authors are also grateful for the many subject matter experts: Dr. Uche Annani, Dr. Daniel Benedetti, Dr. David Conklin, Dr. Joe Fanning, Dr. Sheryl Fleisch, Dr. Gilbert Gonzales, Luke Gregory, Dr. Alex Langerman, Dr. Will Martinez, Dr. Bonnie Miller, Dr. Britany Raymod, Dr. Meg Rush, Dr. Ricky Shinall, and Dr. Shayne Taylor; the authors would like to give special recognition to Kate Payne, who passed away earlier this year and was the backbone of this ethics training program.