Bioethics and the Law Seminar

Catalog description

This course will provide an overview of legal and ethical issues in the provision of health care in the United States. It will provide a foundational understanding of bioethics, which forms the ethical basis for modern health care decision-making, as well as how it interplays with law and medicine. After building an ethical and legal knowledge base, the class will focus on selected bioethics issues and how they arise in patient care. Topics to be discussed will include informed consent, advance directives (health care proxies, living wills, etc.), surrogate decision-making for incapacitated adults and for children, reproductive health care issues, and end-of-life treatment issues, including medical futility. Students will be graded based upon participation and a written paper discussing an ethical and legal issue arising in a health care setting.