A Glasgow University lecturer has been appointed to Scotland's first medical ethics, law and risk post for all five medical schools in the country.

Dr Al Dowie takes up the position, which is based at the University of Glasgow, this month.

He said: "This position is a Scottish first and I am really looking forward to taking up such a challenging post.

"The teaching of ethics has always been a vitally important part of medical and dental training, but this law and ethics role will see the development of that part of the curriculum shared more across the country. It will create a community of practice across the five Scottish medical schools.

"In all five schools there are ethics teachers and ethics curricula, but up until this post was created, there was no individual to co-ordinate collaboration between them.

"Ethics in the health professions is more scrutinised today than ever, with practitioners being increasingly responsible to patients and governing bodies. The newly created post is a recognition of this."

Dr Dowie, 46, will coordinate course work between the universities of Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and St Andrews.

He is currently a medical teacher at Glasgow University but has also lectured at Dundee, St Andrews and Edinburgh, where he specialised in ethics.

The post has been funded by the Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland.

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Ray McHugh (r.mchugh@admin.gla.ac.uk)

For more information, or to speak to Dr Dowie, please contact Ray McHugh, Senior Media Relations Officer, University of Glasgow. Tel - 0141 330 3535, email - r.mchugh@admin.gla.ac.uk

First published: 5 September 2006