ETHC 641 INTRODUCTION TO MEDICAL ETHICS

This course introduces graduate and professional students to clinical ethics consultations as a field of medical ethics and as a field of scholarly inquiry and analysis. It accomplishes this primarily by exploring diverse methods of scholarly inquiry in bioethics, and considers their application to the clinical setting. The course also looks at the historical development of ethics committees and ethics consultation services designed to bring bioethics into the clinical setting. Students explore different disciplinary approaches to bioethics through readings, online class discussions and activities and online presentations. Weekly reading assignments drawn from the literature of bioethics provide context and background for the online discussions. The course concentrates on a variety of controversial topics and issues that are confronted by health care professionals, families, and patients in a tertiary hospital.