Teaching bioethics for biomedical engineering students: a case studies approach

Summary form only given. Students graduating from a biomedical engineering curriculum should be well grounded in the principles of ethics and its applications in their future professional work. Unlike traditional engineering students, a biomedical engineer often works with physicians, dentists and other health care professionals. Such engineers also work as a part of a team with direct responsibility for patient care. Thus biomedical engineering students need to be familiar with ethical issues such as clinical trials for medical devices, animal testing, conflict of interest, genetic engineering and testing, and allocation of scarce resources. Teaching of such topics are often facilitated by the use of case studies illustrating the ethical conflicts that often one faces during the biomedical engineering practices. Examples of using such case studies for teaching a course on ethics for Biomedical Engineers will be presented.