Teaching ethics in family medicine: introducing a faculty handbook.

As part of its mandate, the Committee on Ethics of the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CE-CFPC) has contributed to ethics curriculum development for family medicine residents and provided ethics teaching resources since 1990. More recently, the committee has undertaken a review of previously available resources and formulated new goals for family medicine ethics curricula. The Ethics in Family Medicine: Faculty Handbook1 was born out of pressing concerns identified by family physicians. With the assistance of expert reviewers and representatives from family medicine residency programs across Canada, the CE-CFPC developed ethics curricula goals and was encouraged to develop other teaching resources. The goals were written as ethics competencies and were approved by the CFPC Section of Teachers Council. In early 2012, work began on a set of tools to assist teaching programs with the assessment and evaluation of ethics competencies. This work continues and will be published online. This paper presents the Ethics in Family Medicine: Faculty Handbook as a useful tool for the teaching of ethics in family medicine.