Sustainability and environmental justice in medical ethics education

The third of the Priority Learning Outcomes for Sustainable Healthcare requires that medical students:

Discuss how the duty of a doctor to protect and promote health is shaped by the dependence of human health on the local and global environment.

This is first and foremost a matter of medical ethics and professionalism, and requires engagement within that aspect of the medical school curriculum. The contemporary conceptual resources of mainstream medical ethics, however, are limited in their capacity to address such topics as sustainability and environmental justice. Following consultation with the GMC and Institute of Medical Ethics and the initial SHE Network workshop this September, we are coordinating a working group to develop environmental health and ethics education within medical ethics and professionalism curriculums.

An initial briefing developed by SHE Network members outlines some of the conceptual challenges and opportunities (attached). Please comment below, or contact Alistair Wardrope (healthyplanet@medsin.org), if you would be interested in being involved in a working group pursuing this subject at the medical school and national curriculum-setting levels.