Tenth Annual Medical School Ethics Conference: AMSEC 2026 CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
The annual medical student ethics conference (AMSEC) is a national medical student conference to address ethical issues that arise in medical education. The conference will be held in person at the New York Academy of Medicine in New York City on April 18, 2026. The keynote speaker will be David Shoemaker, PhD, Wyn and William Y. Hutchinson Professor of Ethics and Public Life at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University.
The AMSEC organizing committee invites abstracts for oral presentations on the ethical issues that arise in medical education because of one’s role as a medical student. The theme for AMSEC 2026 is words as actions in medicine. We invite submissions related to the conference theme and on any other topic tackling ethical issues in medical education. Potential topics include, but are not limited to: humor in medicine, justice and equity in medicine, disparity in allocation of educational resources in medical school; learning on or with patients; moral distress; hierarchy in medicine. The deadline for submission is 12/15/25. For submission instructions and eligibility criteria click here.
This year, a select few of the oral presenters will be invited to submit a paper for consideration to the Journal of Medical Ethics. The publication of the submitted papers is conditional on a peer review process conducted by the journal. The invitation to submit a paper should not be taken as a guarantee of publication.
Eligibility
To submit an abstract the author must be enrolled in an accredited medical college. Abstracts co-authored with faculty or residents will not be considered.
Submission Deadline
To receive full consideration, all abstracts must be received by Dec. 15, 2025.
Submission Requirements
All submissions should include two Word documents: a 350-word abstract with title and no identifying information and a cover page with the following information:
1) abstract title;
2) author name;
3) author affiliation; and
4) email address.
Email your submissions to [email protected].
Best Abstract Award & Best Poster Award
The organizing committee will award the best abstract and best poster with a monetary prize.
AMSEC 2026 Call for Artwork
The 10th Annual Medical Student Ethics Conference will feature an art show on the conference theme words as actions in medicine. We invite submissions related to the conference theme and on any other topic tackling ethical issues in medical education. The art show will be curated in collaboration with the Albany Medical College Humanities and Medicine student association. The art show will be conducted in person during the AMSEC conference on April 18, 2026.
To submit an artwork, the author must be enrolled in an accredited medical college.
Submission Requirements
We welcome submissions of paintings, drawings, photographs, or other visual art. We will accept up to five images from each artist. All submissions should include two documents: a title page and the artwork submitted as a PDF, JPEG, PNG, or GIF.
The title page should include:
- author name;
- artwork title;
- artwork medium, size, year;
- artist statement about artwork (100 words or less)
- author affiliation; and
- email address
The artwork image file should be named after the submitting artist’s name.
Both files should be uploaded to Dropbox.
The deadline for submission is Jan. 15, 2026.
Abstract Writing Support
If you would like to submit an abstract but you are not sure how to write an abstract for a topic in ethics, here is helpful information.
Sample Abstracts
The abstracts below were taken from prominent journals in bioethics. In writing your own abstract, you may use these as models. They each represent a different style of paper. The first paper focuses on developing an ethical argument, the second paper weaves together ethics and law, the third one is a case discussion, and the fourth is an ethics themed research paper.
Miller FG, Truog RD, Brock DW. Moral fictions and medical ethics. Bioethics. 2010 Nov;24(9):453-60.
Abstracts of Past AMSEC Presenters
