THIS is apropos a news report (May 1) shared on the social media about a political leader being examined at a local hospital. The management has taken note of the issue and suspended the doctors concerned, and apologised to the leader for the inconvenience caused. An inquiry committee has been formed and asked to submit its report.

I just wonder whether this is a solution to the the declining medical practice? We need to reflect on our system of education and, in the above case, medical education. Do we teach our medical students about humanities and bioethics? The answer is difficult.

With the introduction of the modular system by the standards of medical governing body, some concepts have been introduced such as behavioural sciences but not in spirit. Young students stay away from classes saying the examinations will have only a few questions from the subject, and these can be easily skipped. Though it is on paper, it fails to impact the minds of our graduates. Nowhere in our five-year-long medical course have we introduced terms like ‘privacy’ and ‘confidentiality’ to our students, which were breached in the case mentioned above. Whatever students learn, they do so from their teachers. In postgraduate training of another four years, we do not teach them bioethics. We have a dearth of teachers who can teach their students about the above basic concepts.

The only institute which is carrying out this uphill task of spreading bioethics in the medical profession is the Centre of Bioethics and Culture at Siut (CBEC-SIUT). This institute has been fighting an uphill battle for more than a decade now to introduce this concept . A centre like the CBEC should be encouraged and opened in other parts of country as well.

It’s time we taught our undergraduate and postgraduate medical students bioethics.

Nazli Hossain

Karachi

Published in Dawn, May 5th, 2016