Recommendations of the ESGE Workshop on Ethics in Teaching and Learning Endoscopy

Introduction

The ethical implications of teaching and training in gastrointestinal endoscopy can be derived from the basic principle of Hippocrates: ”to help or at least not to harm”. The goal of ethical teaching can be summarized as follows:

To train endoscopists to a high level of expertise in a way that does not harm patients and exposes patients to training in a fair way and respects their right to self-determination.

While these statements are easily agreed upon, training raises a variety of ethical considerations and dilemmas, the most obvious being: how can we justify exposing patients to a trainee, when the doctor as well as the patient may appreciate that a procedure performed by a trainee may be of a quality inferior to that performed by a fully trained expert?

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