Dar es Salaam. The University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) has partnered with the University of Oslo (UiO), Norway to train ethicists and healthcare professionals in attempt to address ethical dilemmas in clinical practices.
The training through the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies will be conducted in November 2023 and February 2024, to establish sustainable clinic support services, particularly the clinical ethics committee at one of the public hospitals in the country.
Funded by Norwegian Partnership Programme for Global Academic Cooperation (NORPART), the training is implemented through the Enhancing Ethics and Integrity in Medical Research and Clinical Practice (ETHIMED) project that runs from 2022 – 2026.
UDSM head of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Dr Michael Lyakurwa, expressed the need to incorporate clinical ethics courses into the educational curriculum in health and allied science programmes.
“The course is essential for the Sub-Saharan context due to increased moral cases in clinical practice. Yet, there are no established clinical ethics support services to assist healthcare professionals in addressing them,” he said.
Dr Lyakurwa said under the project, ETHIMED are creating a train-the-trainer programme on clinical ethics, training health practitioners and faculty members in Rwanda and Tanzania in a moral deliberation model, establishing a clinical ethics committee and developing a manual for clinical ethics committees in Tanzania.
For his part, Mr Shija Kuhumba, PhD candidate in Clinical Ethics at the University of Oslo, expressed the need to develop clinical ethics guidelines for healthcare professionals.
“We have been trained on moral case deliberation Centre for Medical Ethics deliberation model, if these models are well integrated into our healthcare settings, they might help handle ethical dilemmas in the clinical practice,” he insisted.
On other hand, Mr Lucas Kitula from the UDSM was of the opinion that the clinical ethics guidelines would assist healthcare professionals in handling practical issues.
“Such cases as intercultural issues in healthcare settings, religious issues conflicting with biomedical interventions, and allocation of medical resources in the healthcare setting encountering medical resource constraints need such guidelines,” he said.
As part ETHIMED project, faculty staff from the UDSM attended an International Basic Course on Clinical Ethics at the Centre for Medical Ethics at the University of Oslo. This training took place from May 9 to 12 2023, and it was attended by participants from Africa, Europe and the Caribbean.
Participants acknowledged the significance and relevance of the training to healthcare settings challenged by numerous ethical dilemmas that bring about complexities in medical decision-making.
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