Learning Surgery’s Moral Questions: Mentorship,Reflection,and Professional Formation

Abstract

This piece describes my engagement with the authors of a qualitative study on ethical dilemmas in surgical practice. I recount conversations with Dr. Katherine Fischkoff, a general surgeon and intensivist at Columbia University, and Dr. Steven Char, a surgical resident who initiated the study as a medical student. Through these conversations, I examine how ethical reflection is taught, modeled, and sustained in surgical training.

The article outlines the study’s findings, in which Char conducted interviews with 30 surgeons across subspecialties, revealing themes such as moral distress, disclosure, and institutional culture. It emphasizes how mentorship and informal learning, rather than formal ethics curricula alone, shape how surgeons navigate moral complexity. I then reflect on how Char carried these questions into residency, where he developed a surgical ethics curriculum based on the study’s findings in collaboration with Fischkoff.

From my perspective as a medical student learning from these mentors, the piece situates surgical ethics as both a subject of inquiry and a mode of professional formation, showing how reflective practice and mentorship sustain ethical awareness in a field defined by urgency and uncertainty.