Role-playing for teaching ethics in emergency medicine.

Ethical issues are becoming increasingly complicated. As with all specialties, emergency medicine has ethical dilemmas unique to the field. We describe a method for teaching students to identify and analyze ethical issues in emergency medicine. The course is designed for clinical medical students and house officers and is structured around various situations in which the students role-play. The course requires about 20 to 30 hours and covers a variety of topics from consent to treatment and confidentiality to teaching and education in the emergency department.