Medical Ethicists

Any experience one can obtain dealing with medical-related ethical issues—especially at the college level—will be useful.

Medical ethics is not the right profession for people who expect to find easy, clear-cut answers or prefer to avoid dealing with the tough questions of life and death. Clinical consulting in medical ethics also requires the patience and emotional maturity to work day after day with people who are suffering and in pain.

Since a career as a medical ethicist often requires a Ph.D. or at least a master's degree with some clinical and/or life experience, it is obviously essential to have good academic skills and to enjoy studying. However, learning does not stop when your formal education is complete. Because the field changes so often and so rapidly, medical ethicists must read up on every development and possible policy change that will affect their job. Medical ethicists today are confronting issues created by technological advances that would have been dismissed as science fiction not long ago.