Enhancing Cross-Cultural understandings of ethical issues in medical education

Abstract

The four principles approach (principlism) is widely implemented in medical curricula. However, there is ongoing debate about the "universality" of this approach. A frequent criticism is that principlism reflects Western ideals such as the importance of individual rights. Some Asian scholars have argued that Asian bioethics is essentially different from Western approaches. This paper reports on a qualitative study investigating the impact of "Western-developed" medical ethics teaching on clinical experiences of 40 medical students in Malaysia. Our data suggest the possibility of shared understandings of ethical issues across different cultures. Our research also demonstrates that ethics educ..