Workshops for Educators

The teaching of ethics is a relatively new event in the chiropractic curriculum. Now educators in all professional disciplines are obligated to teach the principles of professionalism with cause. We now teach ethics due to the changing shift in moral values in Western society. This moral and ethical relativism began with the baby boom generation, took off in the latter part of the 1960s and 1970s, and continues to this day.

Today’s student has been raised in a climate of entitlement, permissiveness and materialism. Entitlement is evident in all aspects of leisure and education. Materialism and affluence have defined American and Canadian culture as being one of the pivotal values that is characteristic of our modern society. We crave achievement and success to the point of excess in everything we do.

This is an enormous problem for the professions. Professional standards are always held higher than those of the general public. This is the primary reason why all professions have written codes of conduct, ethics and behaviors: to guard against society’s changing standards. If the changes in moral standards infiltrate the professions, there would be an erosion of the high standards demanded of professionalism. These standards protect the public by ensuring the highest level of trust.

While practicing in an ethical manner is mandated and therefore not optional, the law, through legislation and regulations, can only go so far in setting out what the minimum standards are. While the law does not establish precise optimal performance, professionalism demands that professionals strive for and maintain excellence in all aspects of the clinical encounter.

As educators, we are faced with two unavoidable challenges:

• Professionalism and ethics are key cornerstones predicating all other educational content for students acquiring clinical competence;
• The public demands that we as educators advocate for the principles of professionalism, codes of conduct, behaviors and ethics for the health care practitioner of the future.

Despite this challenge our students are to demonstrate competence of the three key professional tenets:

• All professionals are held to higher standards than the general public;
• The professional holds the position of trust and power, with the patient being weak and vulnerable;
• The responsibility to maintain healthy and functional boundaries in all clinical encounters rests exclusively with the health care provider.

Workshops for educators feature the following content:

• Designing ethics content and teaching strategies
• Teaching boundaries
• ethics and virtues
• principles of professionalism
• resolving an ethical dilemma
• transference and counter-transference
• use of expert guest lecturers
• small group ethics discussions
• the prevention of sexual abuse
• the prevention of financial abuse
• impairment, addiction and competence to practice

Read what others are saying about the ‘Educator’ workshops:

• by far the best faculty development or any on-campus seminar I have attended
• I liked his style—engaging and interesting
• He really knows his field of work and knows what teachers can cover. He is well-read, researched and articulate
• He uses a balance of personal stories and facts/figures; a great job!
• Watching Dr. K. lead the discussions was great
• the interactions with attendees was very informative; engaging and knowledgeable