TEACHING MEDICAL-ETHICS TO 1ST-YEAR STUDENTS BY USING FILM DISCUSSIONTO DEVELOP THEIR MORAL REASONING

Purpose. To evaluate a project on teaching medical ethics to first-yea r students by using film discussion to develop the students' moral rea soning. Method. The participants were 114 first-year students at Texas A&M University Health Science Center College of Medicine in 1989 - 90 , 1990 - 91, and 1991 - 92: (1) 48 (20 women and 28 men) who participa ted during the fall quarter in an elective course on social issues in medicine, which consisted of weekly one-hour discussions of short film s; (2) 37 (18 women and 19 men) who participated in the course during both the fall and winter quarters; and (3) a control group of 29 (8 wo men and 21 men) who did not take the course and so had no exposure to the film discussions. The influence of the discussions on the students ' moral reasoning was measured by using Rest's Defining Issues Test fo r pretests and posttests. The scores of the three groups were compared by using multivariate analysis of variance. Results. There were stati stically significant increases in the moral reasoning scores of both t he course registrants with one-quarter exposure to the film discussion s (p < .002) and those with two-quarter exposure (p < .008) compared w ith the scores of the students who did not take the course and had no exposure (p < .109). Conclusion. No doubt there was a self-selecting b ias on the part of the course registrants; however, since both groups of registrants showed significant increases on their posttest scores, clearly the course did have a positive influence on these students' mo ral reasoning. Thus, it is possible to develop young people's moral re asoning in medical school as well as in earlier educational environmen ts.