“I’m about to wreck it”
This substack is just for you instructors. In two weeks I’ll have a post for everyone but this one is for the prof who has adopted Practical Bioethics and isn’t so sure about using all the features.
One of my favorite things to do is play table-top role-playing games. I’ll pause while you adjust your impressions of me. That’s right I’m an inveterate RPG geek. I cut my teeth on D&D in the 80s. My latest obsession is a game called Blades in the Dark by John Harper. Don’t worry I won’t bore you with the details but what I love of BitD as we in the know call it, is that you can hack the base game and make your own stuff and even sell it.
You can’t quite do that with Practical Bioethics because she is copyrighted but in a sense you can take the text and make it your own in your syllabus.I don’t have to tell you that your classes and mine will be significantly different. You may not have a room full of nursing students. Yours may be filled with some other medical niche with the occasional music major wondering “Why, oh why did I agree to bioethics just because it was the only class available.”
Your class makeup and your teaching style will differ from mine and so you may not want to use all parts of the book or use the parts but in a different order. I have some suggestions for how to scrape the paint off, file the serial numbers down, and hack this book for your needs.
Let’s start with a minimalist version of the text. You have a short term or trimester. 8 weeks or so and you are probably on-line. You might consider just chucking the readings and assign the case studies and “What’s at Stake” sections only. The case studies are always the interesting things, and I have given you enough commentary to get the major concepts. I’d suggest doing Chapters 1-2 (a crash course in normative ethics and moral reasoning) and then picking interesting issues such as chapter 4 (research ethics), 5 (end of life, euthanasia) guaranteed to be relevant to some students, then skip on to 7 (reproductive and genetic technology) and 9 (abortion) because of their contemporary relevance.
There’s the hardcore medical ethics hack. You’ve got experienced medical folk. People who have seen clinical time. Here I’d start with the essay “How Bioethics Journals Work” because you’ll be concentrating on the cases and the readings. Do a quick run-through of chapters 1-2 so you can get to chapter 3 (Patient/Provider relationships) STAT. Let’em pick apart the case studies for all their worth and lead them to the professional journal articles. Assign some outside reading like Paul Kalanathi’s When Breath becomes Air or Atul Gwande’s Complications. You might also ditch the 5Ds in favor of the four-box method commonly taught in medical schools. Be sure and save time for chapter 8 as medical professionals should consider the duties and virtues of good patients.
Now let me address the full semester, nursing student hack. You somehow got stuck teaching the ethics course or hey maybe you are a strange and like teaching this stuff. Either way, you’ve got a full 14-16 weeks to fill (with midterm and final).
I would still recommend “How Bioethics Journals Work” because the average student needs a guide to this new, weird, language. Chapters 1-2 are a given. They lay the foundation for moral reasoning. You may want to ditch the 5 Ds if you don’t like the formula and assign the case studies as essays or writing assignments. Sort of let them think aloud on paper and use the chapter quizzes for a test bank. You might skip to chapters 5 (End of Life), 6 (Scarce resources), and 7 (Genetics and Reproduction) and take it slow. Plan on Two weeks per chapter. Week one is “What’s at stake” and Week Two is for the readings. If you have time, round out this moral reasoning buffet with chapter 8 (patient rights, duties, and responsibilities) and chapter 9 (abortion).
I’m so glad you adopted Practical Bioethics. I worked really hard on it. Tested it with about six different cohorts of nursing and pre-med students, along with the odd music major. Took out chapters, added others. I’m always available in the comments if you want to talk about the best way to hack Practical Bioethics for your class or indeed, just about anything else.