The Health Professional Ethics Rubric: Practical Assessment in Ethics Education for Health Professional Schools

Abstract

A barrier to the development and refinement of ethics education in and across health professional schools is that there is not an agreed upon instrument or method for assessment in ethics education. The most widely used ethics education assessment instrument is the Defining Issues Test (DIT) I & II. This instrument is not specific to the health professions. But it has been modified for use in, and influenced the development of other instruments in, the health professions. The DIT contains certain philosophical assumptions ("Kohlbergian" or "neo-Kohlbergian") that have been criticized in recent years. It is also expensive for large institutions to use. The purpose of this article is to offer a rubric-which the authors have named the Health Professional Ethics Rubric-for the assessment of several learning outcomes related to ethics education in health science centers. This rubric is not open to the same philosophical critiques as the DIT and other such instruments. This rubric is also practical to use. This article includes the rubric being advocated, which was developed by faculty and administrators at a large academic health science center as a part of a campus-wide ethics education initiative. The process of developing the rubric is described, as well as certain limitations and plans for revision.

Health Professions Ethics Rubric: Validation of Reliability in an Interprofessional Health Ethics Course

“…The rubric we used ( Table 1) was adapted from one previously published. 5 The basis for the adapted rubric was the ethical reasoning process that students were instructed to use for analysis of the cases. This process consisted of the following steps: 1) identify the ethical issues; 2) identify the ethical principles; 3) generate two potential solutions; 4) analyze the solutions in terms of ethical principles; and 5) recommend a solution and provide justiication.…”

A longitudinal simulation‐based ethical–legal curriculum for otolaryngology residents

“…Their main purpose was formative and not summative; therefore, they were not used as part of a formal resident assessment. The authors acknowledge the existence of several previously developed and validated tools to assess ethical reasoning . However, for the purpose of assessing performance during simulated scenarios, the authors felt that these tools were not well adapted to the simulation context because most focused on written assessments such as multiple choice questions or short answers, and the remainder were created based on specialty specific cases, with most pertaining to the fields of general practice and internal medicine.…”

“…The authors acknowledge the existence of several previously developed and validated tools to assess ethical reasoning. 25,26 However, for the purpose of assessing performance during simulated scenarios, the authors felt that these tools were not well adapted to the simulation context because most focused on written assessments such as multiple choice questions or short answers, and the remainder were created based on specialty specific cases, with most pertaining to the fields of general practice and internal medicine. For the purposes of this article, ratings from the OTL-HNS staff are the focus of analysis because they represent the most objective and consistent assessors of resident performance across time.…”

A Model for the Assessment of Medical Students’ Competency in Medical Ethics

“…Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions curriculum (Bebeau 1993;Eckles 2005;Goldie et al 2002;Savelescu et al 1999;Self et al 1993). The importance of assessment as a vital component of the medical ethics curriculum has been broadly endorsed (Arnold and Forrow 1993;Carlin et al 2011;Goldie 2000;Savelescu et al 1999). There is, however, ongoing disagreement among medical educators over what the appropriate goals of medical ethics education should be (Novack, Epstein, and Paulsen, 1999).…”

“…The literature on medical ethics education discusses a variety of assessment methods (Carlin et al 2011;Goldie 2000;Lynch, Surdyk, and Eiser 2004;Mattick and Bligh 2006;Patenaude, Niyonsenga, and Fafard 2003;Rezler et al 1992;Self et al 1993;Singer et al 1994). We reviewed and considered a number of the suggested approaches to evaluation, including short-answer tests, moral development tests, reflections, short writing assignments, Objective Structured Clinical Examinations, and standardized patient (SP) encounters.…”