Le spécialiste de l′éthique dans la médecine universitaire

Academic medicine more and more recognizes ethics as part of its mission. What′s the role of the specialist in ethics in the context of such a development? By the fact that the term ethicist isn′t well received in the francophone world, the author has chosen to use the expression specialist in ethics in order to avoid any misunderstanding. In the first part, the author analyzes the notion of a specialist in ethics by describing three levels of ethical involvement in academic medicine. The second part discusses the nature of ethics in academic medicine. Ethics includes various elements with the goal of establishing the conditions of an action which is considered good in given circumstances. Ethics can′t be reduced to a matter of questioning nor be defined as a discipline. The various faces of medical ethics as we see them at work in different countries refer to a practice. The third part describes the main tasks of the specialist in ethics: education, consultation and research. If, from a country to the other, it′s true that the work done by the specialist in ethics takes different forms, should we not see them as complementary, everyone trying to say something important concerning the ethical needs in contemporary academic medicine?