Ethics & Values Signature Program

Although it is clear that veterinary educators are becoming increasingly sensitive to the need for ethical instruction, much work on embracing such training into the curriculum still needs to be accomplished. Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University has led the way in this regard, and has fashioned the most highly developed program in veterinary ethics in the United States and Canada.

• The Importance of Ethics & Values in Veterinary Medicine
• The Ethics & Values Program
• The Center for Animals & Public Policy
• Department of Environmental and Population Health

The Importance of Ethics & Values in Veterinary Medicine

In an important respect, the ethical task of veterinarians is often more difficult and complex than that of physicians or dentists. It is clear whom the physician or dentist serve: they serve the patient, and their primary concern must always be for the welfare and interests of the patient. Veterinarians, on the other hand, serve both the animal (which is the patient) and the client, who pays the fee and who, in the eyes of the law at least, may determine much of the course of treatment. Sometimes the interests of these parties conflict, and the veterinarian is caught in the middle, wanting to help both.

Students of veterinary medicine also differ from medical or dental students in several important ways. They are motivated to study healing in regard to animals because of their concern for and attachment to a particular species, or because of personal experiences with various animals, whether encountered on farms, in sport, or at home. They need to learn complex details about the nature, development, diseases, reproductive biology, habitat needs, and behavior of a vast range of species; our students do not limit their formal study to those animals which originally sparked their commitment to become veterinary medical doctors.

Veterinary students must often work even harder than other medical practitioners in order to create for themselves an ethical standard that will serve them daily in their work. At Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University , assisting students in this effort and giving them the basis to help them develop thoughtful, practical ethical positions are of the utmost importance.

The Ethics & Values Program

Students at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University begin their first exposure to ethics in their first year with a required course in Human-Animal Relations. Formal instruction in professional ethics begins with their third year with the required course Jurisprudence and Ethics. The combination of law and ethics has successfully encouraged students to consider ethical questions inherent in legal ones, and vice versa.

In their fourth year, all students must present an ethics case as part of their clinical work in small animal medicine. The students select a case that they themselves handled or observed, and present a case work-up similar to the required report of a medical case. An oral presentation is also required. The session impresses upon students the evidence that ethics is not apart from medicine, but is in fact intertwined with daily practice.