Bioethics, Medical Humanities, and the Future of the "Field": Reflections on the Results of the ASBH Survey of North American Graduate Bioethics/Medical Humanities Training Programs

Introduction and Background

In the summer of 1999 at the annual bioethics "summer camp" in Virginia, a discussion session was held on bioethics and medical humanities graduate programs. Participants represented a wide variety of institutions and programs—small and large, thriving and struggling—with an equally wide assortment of educational offerings—certificate, fellowship, M.A., and Ph.D.; traditional and web based. Some participants enthusiastically spoke of plans to launch new programs, even as others wondered aloud about the viability of their existing ones. Just as pressing were concerns and differences over what various programs prepared one to do and employment prospects for graduates.

The discussion at that Virginia "summer camp" did not, of course, occur in a vacuum. It reflected a broader conversation that was going on concerning the nature and direction of the "field" (bioethics? medical humanities? academic? clinical? profession? discipline? hybrid? reform directed? co-opted? etc.). Indeed, as early as the first annual meeting of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) in November of 1998 a motion was passed to study the growing number of training programs in bioethics and medical humanities and the implications for graduates of those programs. It was this ongoing conversation that ultimately prompted successive presidents of ASBH, Mary Faith Marshall and Laurie Zoloth, to appoint and support the ASBH Status of the Field Committee. The Committee's first project, done in cooperation with the Canadian Bioethics Society and with support from The Greenwall Foundation, was to survey graduate programs in North America that train individuals for work in bioethics or medical humanities. This special The American Journal of Bioethics forum focuses on the possible implications of the results of the ASBH Status of the Field Committee's survey of graduate bioethics/medical humanities training programs in North America.

The forum is divided into two sections. Section one consists of contributions from persons currently working in the field (with all due caveats, "bioethics/medical humanities"), while section two comprises comments by current or former graduate students in bioethics/medical humanities programs. In order to ensure a balanced set of commentary articles covering a wide range of graduate student experiences while also addressing a common set of significant questions about graduate bioethics and medical humanities programs, we asked all graduate student commentators to consider the following questions:

• Why did you enroll in a graduate bioethics/medical humanities program?
• How well did your graduate bioethics/medical humanities program meet your needs?
• What do you think graduate programs like these mean for the future of the field?

Most important, we asked each graduate student commentator to describe his or her own experience as a student in a graduate bioethics/medical humanities program. We are confident that you will find the range of commentaries to be interesting and illuminating not only for their content but also for the wide variety of perspectives they reflect. Graduate student commentaries come from traditional (those coming straight from undergraduate schools) and nontraditional (midcareer professionals), North American and non-North American, and from a wide variety of disciplinary and professional backgrounds. This itself, we think, says something important about the "field."

In contrast to the diversity of graduate student commentators in section two, contributors to section one share a common general perspective—that is, all currently hold what can properly be described as "bioethics" or "medical humanities" positions. Within this common general perspective, however, each contributor considers the possible implications of the graduate bioethics/medical humanities program survey results through the lenses of his or her own unique experiences and concerns. In addition to this introductory piece, section one...