The required first-year Pritzker School of Medicine course, The Doctor-Patient Relationship, is consistently ranked by students as one of the best pre-clinical medical school courses. Offered every winter, it involves lecture and discussion based learning.
Offered every winter to select fourth-year medical students, the Advanced Medical Ethics course gives students the opportunity to discuss ethical issues they encountered in their rotations with each other, MacLean faculty and fellows, and students in the Doctor-Patient Relationship course. Students in this course serve as discussion leaders for the small, post-DPR lecture groups.
The Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence at the University of Chicago was created in September 2011 with a focus on improving the doctor-patient relationship through patient care, teaching and research. The institute supports three to five new medical students a year as Bucksbaum Student Scholars, assisting them as needed with tuition and fees from the second to the fourth year of medical school. Additionally, the Bucksbaum Interest Group (BIG) at the Pritzker School of Medicine is focused on creating opportunities for medical students to participate in Bucksbaum Institute programs in order to foster greater understanding of the doctor-patient relationship.
The MacLean Center fosters interdisciplinary discussions about issues in clinical medical ethics by hosting the annual Dorothy J. MacLean Fellows Conference (now in its 35th year) every Fall, and a year-long Interdisciplinary Lecture Series on ethics and health care (now in its 41st year). Medical students are encouraged to come to and participate in these events.