Introducing Climate Change to Medical Students

Abstract

This chapter discusses using a broad humanities perspective to teach medical students about climate change. It argues that the humanities can recover a more robust approach to bioethics and serve as a bridge between students’ professional training and their own spiritual and moral convictions. The chapter describes a short elective course taught to first- and second-year students at the McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. It concludes with a class exercise in which students read the Physician Charter and write a short paper that takes one commitment from the charter and applies it to climate change.