Bioethics Pedagogy Workshops, November 11-13, 2021 and December 6-8, 2021

CBEC has been disseminating bioethics education for the past 17 years but we have never really focused on training people how to actually teach bioethics. This gap was highlighted in the research conducted by our faculty Bushra Shirazi in pursuit of her Masters in Health Professional Education degree. Shirazi was exploring the status of undergraduate bioethics education in medical colleges of Karachi and came to the realization that major impediments in actualizing bioethics education in medical colleges included the paucity of bioethics trained faculty and the challenge of teaching bioethics to different cohorts with different educational requirements.

The question of “how to teach bioethics” became the rationale for two Bioethics Pedagogy (BP) workshops run by CBEC faculty at the end of 2021. Applications were invited from our alumni and others who were involved in teaching bioethics at their institutions. The first BP workshop was offered in Karachi in November 2021 and was designed as a hybrid workshop, with 12 participants from Karachi and 12 online, from Kenya, Cameron, Singapore and from other cities of Pakistan. Based on small group work followed by actual teaching, the workshop provided hands-on practice in the use of videos, cases and interactive lectures to teach bioethics, for both onsite and online participants. Sessions were led by Bushra Shirazi and Shahid Shamim, both surgeons and medical educationists with formal bioethics training.

Beginning with lesson planning, the faculty provided an overview on how and where the three educational tools, videos, cases and interactive lectures, could be used optimally while teaching various bioethics topics. Participants were divided into three online and three onsite groups which worked on different modalities, developing lesson plans and conducting teaching sessions.

Our second BP workshop was organized for 12 selected applicants from Islamabad, Peshawar and Lahore and was an in-person event, designed as a full-time 4 day residential retreat in the picturesque setting of the Margalla hills beyond Islamabad. The retreat format allowed much more time for group work and fostered more effective teamwork. Several changes were brought into the structuring of the event based on the experiences and feedback from the first BP workshop in Karachi. The retreat format also allowed the faculty opportunities to explore non-conventional modalities of learning. These included a literary gathering after dinner on one of the workshop evenings, with faculty and participants contributing short stories and poetry that connected to ethics. On another evening students participated in a moral game that highlighted factors that influence ethical decision making, such as personal life experiences, social standing, gender, sexuality, and conduct.

Both BP workshops were very well received by the participants, and the faculty was left wondering why we had not initiated them years ago. With the experience of having conducted two BP workshops using different formats, we realize that there is a need for training opportunities which allow participants to engage with different strategies which can work with a variety of audiences – face to face, online and in the hybrid format. Not only can these interventions be a ‘stand alone’ feature, they can also be integrated on a regular basis into formal academic programs.