Teaching medical ethics to medical students: moral, legal, psychological and philosophical aspects.

Teaching medical ethics to medical students requires a mixture of the moral, legal, psychological and philosophical aspects of the subject. The experiences of a teaching programme at Hannover Medical School will be described. The didactic concepts derived from these experiences are given under five headings: Ethics education should take place continuously from the first year of medical school onward. Ethics teaching should progress from concrete cases to more abstract and theoretical considerations. Real cases are preferable to paper cases. Practising skills is as important as teaching knowledge. Participation is guaranteed by small-group-teaching. The concept is supported by data from the evaluation of the Hannover courses.