Boucher Presents on Teaching Organizational Ethics in Qatar

Faculty member Nathan Boucher, recently spoke at the Medical and Health Humanities: Global Perspectives 2025 conference in Doha, Qatar. Hosted by Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q) and Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts Qatar (VCUarts Qatar), the two-day event brought together more than 80 expert speakers from around the world to explore the integration of humanities into medical education and clinical practice. Scholars, educators, students, and healthcare professionals convened to discuss how humanistic approaches can cultivate more empathetic, ethical, and patient-centered health systems.

Boucher’s presentation, Teaching Organizational Ethics: Engaging Structural Inequity and Artistic Expression, highlighted his innovative approach to teaching ethics in public policy and healthcare settings. As the designer of the graduate-level organizational ethics course at Duke’s Sanford School, Boucher shaped his curriculum around the role of structural inequity in ethical decision-making. His course encourages students to critically examine how race, gender, social status, and income level influence organizational ethics.

In his talk, Boucher outlined how he has incorporated artistic expression as a tool for engaging students in complex ethical discussions over the past six years of the course. Through creative exercises such as anonymous visual storytelling and collaborative artistic projects, students are encouraged to reflect on their own biases, privileges, and ethical dilemmas they may face as future professionals. The course also incorporates biomedical ethics principles—autonomy, justice, beneficence, and nonmaleficence—alongside business ethics concepts such as competition, financial stewardship, and public trust. Joan Tronto’s ethics of care framework (attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness) is woven throughout the curriculum, reinforcing a holistic and human-centered approach to organizational ethics.

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The conference, held at WCM-Q, featured keynote speakers, including Prof. Paul Crawford from the University of Nottingham and Dr. Mohammed Ghaly from Hamad Bin Khalifa University, both of whom emphasized the growing importance of humanities in medical education. As AI continues to transform healthcare, the conference underscored the critical need for medical professionals to develop deeper empathy, ethical awareness, and humanistic thinking in clinical practice.

Boucher’s contribution to the event highlighted the intersection of ethics, policy, and healthcare, demonstrating how interdisciplinary teaching methods can help future leaders navigate ethical challenges with greater awareness and responsibility. “As some politics and policies move away from identifying and considering existing inequities, we still need to train professionals in these skills – the inequities have not gone away” says Boucher regarding his continued approach to the work in the present political climate. His work aligns with broader global efforts to integrate humanities into health and medical education, ensuring that ethical reasoning remains at the forefront of leadership and decision-making in organizations.