Where is the patient in medical ethics education?

The purpose of this presentation is to explore the role of patients or patient representatives in the delivery of medical ethics education. There is an urgent need for medical ethics education to become more clinically-focused and relevant to the needs of medical students. In addition to clinical relevance, however, current international consensus on the importance of patientcentred care means that medical ethics education must also focus on patients’ experiences, preferences and self-reported needs. One way of making ethics education more patient-focused is to explore the growing literature examining patient preferences; another is to expose medical students to the experiences of actual patients or patient representatives themselves, through first-hand narrative accounts. This brief presentation will outline the aims of medical ethics education and explore ways in which the use of patient narratives may enhance these aims.