The Fine Line Between Learning and Negligence

Abstract

Throughout the past few decades, as global health trips for undergraduates and medical students began to increase in popularity, so did the topic of global health ethics. While there has been much research on the regulations for medical students' global health experiences, the same cannot be said for their undergraduate counterparts (Mccall & Iltis, 2014). Given the numerous pre-medical students attending these trips, it is vital to understand their motivations and bring light to the ethical issues that might occur. Intense literature analysis and a global health survey completed by students at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine were used in this paper to weigh the benefits against the costs of these trips. Although there are ethical dilemmas, comparing undergraduate global health trips to medical school trips shows that there may be steps that can be taken to improve trips and avoid severe ethical issues. Undergraduate universities and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) could vet and post approved programs for their pre-medical students. This and increased efforts to inform people of ethical problems associated with global health would allow students to benefit from their trip while minimizing ethical costs to the country and themselves.