OTHER ELECTIVES OFFERED AT P&S
PLEASE NOTE: Students may only participate in 1 Ethics and 1 Narrative Medicine elective.
| MD03P Clinical Ethics Consultation |
| All interested Columbia P&S students MUST have approval from the course director for this elective. This elective is not available to visiting students. |
| Course Director: |
Dr. Kenneth Prager, 212-305-5535, kmp43@aol.com |
| Course Coordinator |
Elizabeth Smith, 212-305-5535, emsmith2003@yahoo.com |
| Given: |
November-June. Other months by permission only. |
| Maximum: |
2 students per month |
| Start Date/Time: |
First weekday of the month, contact course coordinator 2 weeks prior for time |
| Site/Location: |
Room 307 Atchley-Irving Pavilion |
| Description: |
Description: Provides an introduction to the assessment of common clinical medical ethics issues seen in a large tertiary care medical center.
Objectives: To give the student an exposure to common dilemmas involving clinical medical ethics, such as end-of-life issues, interpreting advance directives, medical futility, intra-family and family-physician conflict, patient capacity, resource allocation, organ transplantation and others. The impact of New York State law on these issues, when applicable, will be discussed. By the end of the month it is hoped that the student will be able to approach these cases in an organized manner and be able to start sensitively assessing, prioritizing and formulating an ethically, legally and medically appropriate plan of action.
Learning Experience: The students will see cases referred to a busy clinical adult ethics consultation service. After reviewing the patient's medical record, and when appropriate, speaking with the patient, family and care givers, the student will formulate an approach to the ethical questions raised and present his or her evaluation to the course director. The students will attend meetings held between the ethics consultant, care givers and families. Students will attend the monthly meetings of the adult and pediatric ethics committees, as well as any ethics lectures given at the medical center. They will be available, as well, for pediatrics ethics consultations. The students will present a literature review on a subject of their choosing twice during the month.
Feedback: Continuous.
Evaluation: By course director and any other faculty members involved in the consult service. |
| MD05P Bioethics Elective |
| THIS ELECTIVE IS NOT AVAILABLE TO VISITING STUDENTS |
| Course Director: |
Dr. Ruth Fischbach, (212) 305-8387, rf416@columbia.edu |
| Coordinator: |
Judith Atkinson, (212) 305-8387 |
| Given: |
January |
| Maximum: |
10 students |
| Start Date/Time: |
First week of the month, Date and Time TBA |
| Site/Location: |
CUMC To be arranged |
| Description: |
Held at Columbia University Medical Center campus, including New York-Presbyterian Hospital (NYPH), this course provides a broad exposure to practical and academic dilemmas in Bioethics as well as opportunities for independent exploration of Bioethics topics of personal interest.
Objectives: To familiarize students with the contentious implications of rapid and extraordinary advances in health care, social policy, and biotechnology that generate unprecedented ethical dilemmas.
Learning Experience: Student experience will include discussion and readings on the most important topics in Bioethics (e.g., the ethics of: stem cell “therapy” and cloning, elective C-sections, buying organs, infant and adult end-of-life conundrums, drug reps and conflicts of interest, and boundary issues). Each student selects a topic to present with faculty mentoring. Optional opportunities to observe the CUMC Ethics Committee and go on ethics consults with Dr. Prager, observe the Institutional Review Board (IRB), the transplant coordination teams to see who gets the scarce organ, and NYPH Pain Service all provide clinical experience in compelling ethical issues that are endemic. Discussion of bioethical topics with a preceptor and classmates as well as an “op-ed” final paper provide an academic grounding in the field of Bioethics.
Feedback: Continuous throughout rotation by preceptors.
Evaluation: Based on participation and thoughtfulness in class discussion, topic presentation, and final paper. Class schedule arranged to fit student availability. Attendance is required. |
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| MD07P Narrative Medicine |
| Course Director: |
Dr. Rita Charon, (212) 305-4942, rac5@columbia.edu |
| Given: |
March |
| Maximum: |
12 students per month |
| Start Date/Time: |
First weekday of the month, 9 am |
| Site/Location: |
CUMC, Presbyterian Hospital, 9 East, Room 105 |
| Description: |
Director Rita Charon and faculty of the Program in Narrative Medicine are offering a month-long intensive fourth-year elective in Narrative Medicine in March of 2009. Close reading, writing fiction, and reflective writing develop narrative and literary skills that end up adding to one’s clinical effectiveness. In our Narrative Medicine Immersion month over the past several years, we have gathered twelve fourth-year students from P&S and from visiting medical schools for intensive craft and interpretive training, with the conceptual framework in mind that strengthening the skills of representation is a powerful means toward strengthening the skills of attention in clinical work. On the basis of student evaluations, the quality of written work produced, and projects that students undertake in the years following the intensive narrative training, the elective has demonstrated a capacity to target and improve these specific narrative competencies toward attentive and effective patient care.
The elective will include the following:
- Graduate-level training in close reading of contemporary fiction, not limited to fictions about illness or medicine but rather attending to the complexities of the act of reading. Critical and theoretical approaches will be introduced alongside the literary texts. We will read a novel a week, including works of William Maxwell, Per Petterson, Pat Barker, and John Banville. One 2-hour meeting per week. Weekly reader-response writings assigned.
- Seminar on illness narratives, including first-person accounts of illness written by patients or family members of patients and works offering theoretical frameworks of such autobiographical materials. One 2-hour meeting per week.
- Writing workshop directed by Columbia University Writing Division faculty and advanced MFA students. Students will read and workshop one other’s work, read established writers focusing on craft and technique, and do in-class writing exercises to help generate new writing. By the end of the month, students will have written new stories or poems, revised old ones, and learned methods to critique their own work. Two 2-hour meetings per week.
To obtain more information, contact Dr. Charon at rac5@columbia.edu
To learn more about Narrative Medicine, visit the program web site at www.narrativemedicine.org
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