Health Care Ethics in Practice and Policy

Catalog description

This course provides a foundation in ethics for nurses in advanced practice. The first part of the course will cover the fundamental issues, prevailing views, and laws in clinical ethics, with a focus on issues related to nursing, including the nurse's professional role and the nurse-patient relationship; trust, confidentiality, and veracity; informed consent; autonomy and paternalism; the right to refuse treatment; decision-making capacity; surrogate decision-making and advance directives; and conscientious objection. If time permits, other topics may be included, including: abortion, physician-assisted suicide, reproductive technology, genetic testing, and the ethics of research on human subjects. The second part of the course will cover fundamental topics in organizational ethics, which includes ethical issues involved in health-care administration and institutional policy, such as resource allocation, conflicts of interest, the economics of health-care delivery, and the role of ethics committees and clinical ethicists. Throughout the course we will discuss controversial case-studies through which students will develop skill in presenting well-reasoned arguments for their positions.