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Medical Student Ethics Conference

Ninth Annual Medical School Ethics Conference

April 10-11, 2025

Drawing the Boundaries of Medicine

The Annual Medical Student Ethics Conference (AMSEC) is a two-day national conference to address ethical issues that arise in medical education. The conference will be held virtually April 10-April 11, 2025. The keynote speaker will be Keisha Ray, PhD, Associate Professor at the McGovern Center for Humanities & Ethics at UT Health Houston.

Call for Abstracts

The conference solicits abstracts from students from any accredited medical school in the United States. Over the past nine years, AMSEC has become a national venue for students to discuss ethical issues in medicine. We instituted a mentorship system, which pairs the authors of accepted abstracts with faculty mentors to help them develop their conference presentation. These collaborations have resulted in a number of student-led publications in bioethics journals such as The Hastings Center Report, Bioethics, and Journal of Medical Ethics.

The organizing committee invites abstracts for oral presentations on the ethical issues that arise in medical education because of one’s role as a medical student. The theme for AMSEC 2025 is " Drawing the Boundaries of Medicine." We invite submissions related to the conference theme and on any other topic tackling ethical issues in medical education. Potential topics include, but are not limited to: justice and equity in medicine, disparity in allocation of educational resources in medical school; learning on/with patients; humor in medicine; moral distress; hierarchy in medicine.

Eligibility

To submit an abstract the author must be enrolled in an accredited medical college. Abstracts co-authored with faculty or residents will not be considered.

Submission Deadline

To receive full consideration, all abstracts must be received by Nov. 1, 2024.

Submission Requirements

All submissions should include two Word documents: a 350-word abstract with title and no identifying information and a cover page with the following information:

1) abstract title;
2) author name;
3) author affiliation; and
4) email address.

Email your submissions to [email protected].

Best Abstract Award & Best Poster Award

The organizing committee will award the best abstract and best poster with a monetary prize.

Abstract Writing Support

If you would like to submit an abstract but you are not sure how to write an abstract for a topic in ethics, here is helpful information.

Sample Abstracts

The abstracts below were taken from prominent journals in bioethics. In writing your own abstract, you may use these as models. They each represent a different style of paper. The first paper focuses on developing an ethical argument, the second paper weaves together ethics and law, the third one is a case discussion, and the fourth is an ethics themed research paper.

Miller FG, Truog RD, Brock DW. Moral fictions and medical ethics. Bioethics. 2010 Nov;24(9):453-60.

Manninen BA. Rethinking Roe v. Wade: defending the abortion right in the face of contemporary opposition. Am J Bioeth. 2010 Dec;10(12):33-46.

Erbay H, Alan S, Kadıoğlu S. A case study from the perspective of medical ethics: refusal of treatment in an ambulance. Journal of Medical Ethics. 2010 Nov;36(11):652-5.

Jones NL, Peiffer AM, Lambros A, et al. Problem-based learning for professionalism and scientific integrity training of biomedical graduate students: process evaluation. Journal of Medical Ethics 2010; 36:620-626.

Abstracts of Past AMSEC Presenters

Ellis, RD. The role of values in scientific theory selection and why it matters to medical education. Bioethics. 2019; 33: 984– 991.

Byju AS, Mayo K, Medical error in the care of the unrepresented: disclosure and apology for a vulnerable patient population Journal of Medical Ethics 2019;45:821-823.

Salwi S, Erath A, Patel PD, et al. Aligning patient and physician views on educational pelvic examinations under anaesthesia: the medical student perspective. Journal of Medical Ethics 2021;47:430-433.

Call for Artwork

The 9th Annual Medical Student Ethics Conference will feature an art show on the theme Drawing the Boundaries of Medicine. During the conference, through scholarship and artwork, we would like to explore what it means to be healthy, the scope of medical care, social determinants of health, and the role of medicine in human flourishing. The art show will be curated in collaboration with the Albany Medical College Humanities and Medicine student association. The art show will be conducted virtually during the AMSEC conference on April 10-11, 2025.

Eligibility

To submit an artwork, the author must be enrolled in an accredited medical college.

Submission Requirements

We welcome submissions of paintings, drawings, photographs, or other visual art. We will accept up to 5 images from each artist. All submissions should include two documents: a title page and the artwork submitted as a PDF, JPEG, PNG, or GIF.

The title page should include:

  • author name;
  • artwork title;
  • artwork medium, size, year;
  • artist statement about artwork (100 words or less)
  • author affiliation; and
  • email address.

The artwork image file should be named after the submitting artist’s name.

Both files should be uploaded to Dropbox.

Submission Deadline

The deadline for submission is Jan. 15, 2025.