Medical Ethics and the Law

1.5 Credit Hours

This course introduces students to medical ethics analysis and invites them to consider the relationship between medical ethics and health law through consideration of compelling cases drawn from both headlines and clinical experience. Students will learn how hospital ethics consultants and ethics committees work, and they will examine the interplay between legal and ethics principles by puzzling through controversies in reproductive health, end-of-life care, the care of people with disabilities, and the legal and ethical requirements of health care provision (such as confidentiality and informed decision-making). At the end of the course, they will step into the simulated roles of ethics consultant and ethics committee members, putting what they learned into practice.