Abstract

Medical ethics education is increasingly expected to prepare students for the moral complexity of clinical practice, including situations marked by uncertainty, suffering, and institutional constraint. However, ethics curricula often focus on principles, codes, and decision-making frameworks, leaving students insufficiently prepared to engage with ethically challenging situations that resist moral clarity or resolution. This article examines the pedagogical use of the documentary Take Care of Maya (dir. Henry Roosevelt, 2023) in undergraduate medical ethics education as a resource for ethical understanding that cannot be easily captured by principle-based approaches alone. Drawing on my classroom experience and relevant literature, the article analyses how documentary film can support ethical reflection at a level that precedes explicit decision-making. The case of a child diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) foregrounds ethical issues related to chronic pain, epistemic injustice, and fractured trust between families and medical institutions. Rather than functioning as a tool for emotional engagement alone, the documentary integrates ethical reflection with clinically relevant learning about pain and its contested diagnosis. The article argues that, when embedded within a carefully structured and psychologically safe learning environment, documentary-based teaching can foster ethical attentiveness to suffering, pain, uncertainty, and institutional responsibility. Used in this way, documentary film complements existing approaches to medical ethics education by supporting reflective engagement with morally complex situations that cannot be adequately addressed through dilemma-based methods alone.