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With the need for emergency medical services growing steadily
each year in the United States, particularly in the wake of the
September 11 terrorist attacks, CWRU's School of Medicine has
named the Department of Emergency Medicine at the MetroHealth
Medical Center campus as a new academic department.
And with a growing interest in ethics among health care professionals,
especially with issues of cloning and stem cells, the School of
Medicine also has created an academic department of its Center
for Biomedical Ethics and will launch an innovative doctorate
in bioethics.
Most medical schools have centers or departments of biomedical
ethics or medical humanities but offer only master's level training.
CWRU is one of only two universities in the country to offer a
pure bioethics doctorate program in addition to its master's and
joint degrees with medicine, nursing, law and genetics.
"By making the Center for Biomedical Ethics a Department of Bioethics,
the University has sent two important signals," said Stuart Youngner,
Susan E. Watson Professor of Bioethics. "First, that the University
sees a leadership role for itself in elucidating the complex social
and cultural issues that fall under the rubric of bioethics. Second,
that by changing the name from biomedical ethics to the more inclusive
bioethics, the university recognizes that the issues are not the
province of medicine alone."
Approximately 50 percent of all medical schools recognize emergency
medicine as a specialty. Five of the six medical schools in Ohio
have an academic department of emergency medicine.
"Unfortunate events of the past year outline the need for physicians
to have an understanding of mass casualties and trauma, as well
as to recognize symptoms of bioterrorism," said Charles L. Emerman,
chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at MetroHealth,
who also will head the new CWRU department. "The new Department
of Emergency Medicine will help address the growing need."
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